


Kawarimi no Jutsu

by lolani



Category: Naruto
Genre: Awkward Romance, Coping with PTSD, Dorks in Love, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mostly one-sided involving Kakashi, Mutual Pining, One-Sided Attraction, Or Is It?, Post-Fourth Shinobi War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2020-11-23 23:14:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20897717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lolani/pseuds/lolani
Summary: It turns out Iruka and Yamato have more than just Naruto in common. They've also both been rejected by Kakashi. There could be worse ways to start a relationship. But it might also force them to confront uncomfortable truths about the paths they are on in the aftermath of a war, and whether those paths can converge.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Me: *huge KakaIru shipper*
> 
> Also me: “Everybody has already written all the good KakaIru fic, so I have to settle for writing every pairing that’s tangentially related.”

”I don’t think that’s a good idea, sensei.”

In Iruka’s short history of let downs, this one had been surprisingly gentle. He’d struck out before while dating — mostly with women, since he was gay as Christmas, and who was he trying to kid there? Less often with men, since Mizuki had left a scar on more than just his back. This particular failure, however, was gutting and destabilizing in a way he hadn’t expected.

He’d thought he and Kakashi were becoming... if not friends, then friendly acquaintances. They chatted amiably, mostly about Naruto and Sakura, whenever they met in passing. He was one of the only other people in Konoha who cared about Naruto as much as he did. It felt like a lifetime since he’d had to yell at Kakashi about turning in a trash excuse for a report in the mission room, though that was due in part to the war and in part to the fact that everyone knew Kakashi would be Hokage soon. Iruka’s crush on the man, born from an infamously heated shouting match before the Chuunin Exam, had grown to be visible from space since the day Kakashi had saved his life from Pain.

After he awoke from the Infinite Tsukuyomi’s dream, he knew he needed to confront the man before he lost the chance forever. The problem was, Kakashi had been impossible to find these days. Any rare glimpse of him involved him going in or out of the hospital or Hokage Tower, the dark circles under his (sharingan-less) eyes making him look sunken and drained even with his face half-covered. 

Seeing him alone in the corner booth of the bar that Friday night, all unkempt silver hair and dressed in only his standard issue blues without a vest, Iruka recognized the opportunity for what it was. Already two drinks into liquid courage, he didn’t bother to examine too closely whether it was a good time to get his feelings all over a man still coping with loss from war. They were all coping with loss. They were shinobi. There would never be a good time.

“I’m sorry,” Kakashi said, and it sounded genuine, though that was hardly consoling to his ego. “I can’t be what you’re looking for. I don’t do relationships.”

“Oh.” Iruka swallowed thickly. “Ah, well, it doesn’t have to be—” 

“Sensei.” The pitying look Kakashi gave him was the same one Iruka often gave to the students he had to fail. “Find someone who can treat you the way you deserve.” 

Iruka threw up his hands in drunken annoyance. Stupid jonin. He was a schoolteacher, and he recognized pigtail-pulling antics for what they were, even when they came in the form of dirty, chicken-scratch-covered reports and verbal spats in the mission room. Had he read Kakashi wrong? And who was Kakashi to decide what it was Iruka needed? He could do casual. He could do fuck buddies. 

What the fuck did Iruka supposedly deserve, anyway? What did any of them deserve?

He tried to ignore the other patrons discreetly eyeing him as he went slinking back to his empty chair at his table with Izumo, and the fellow chuunin gave him a sympathetic pat on the back. Years of pining, gone up in smoke just like that. _Lesson learned, Iruka_, he chided himself. _Never fall in love with silver-haired men._ Clearly this was a pattern.

“Gotta shoot your shot, I guess,” Kotetsu, who was also at their table, said with a sigh and a resigned shrug.

Iruka spent the next hour with his cheek against the lacquer wood tabletop, contemplating how best he could merge with it or the floor.

* * *

He thought about his time in the Infinite Tsukuyomi a lot. How could he not? Since it had been shaped by the desire he carried in his heart. Like any dream, the details were hazy now that he’d awoken, chased away by a reality that operated by a different set of rules. Things like faces, words, objects — the dreams of his subconscious didn’t need such things in order to piece together an emotional resonance. The heart and the head: just as disconnected as dreams from reality.

A home on the far side of town — not too far from the Academy, but distant enough that it routed him through a scenic walk with time to be alone with his thoughts, or, more importantly, alone with a partner.

A fellow shinobi mate who loved books and would share tea and sake with Iruka in their little personal library full of literature and adventure stories and maybe even the raunchy stuff that he didn’t want to admit he owned. One who would bicker with him, challenge him, keep his body and his intellect sharp, but would still take him to bed and take him apart in all the ways he needed. Someone equal parts funny, tactical, and dangerous, who could keep up with Iruka’s mercurial moods and his penchant for trickery, and could check his tendency to wear his heart on his kunai holster.

A house tidy enough, but still full of drawings from his students...or maybe from children of their own? And photos of his parents. A family album by the sofa full of pictures, old and new. 

A dog at his feet. Several dogs? And a child in his arms. His child? Naruto’s child? One he could love from birth to adulthood without the constraints of a schoolhouse.

What fool dreamed of having these things with the (former) Copy-Nin of Konoha? Suddenly Iruka understood what Kakashi meant by not being what Iruka was looking for. It must have been written all over him: a chuunin schoolteacher who hardly took missions, who wrangled children for a living, who doted over an orphan jinchuriki, and whose only appearance of danger was the scar across his nose.

Umino Iruka, most domestic shinobi in Konoha. Of course Kakashi didn’t want him. He might as well have been wearing a sign around his neck that said “This One Requires Commitment.” Maybe that was why he sucked so badly at dating. How many shinobi longed for a family the way he apparently did?

* * *

Kotetsu and Izumo had each bought him another beer, but after the bartender plunked the third bottle in front of him, he had to wave it off with an inebriated shake of his arm. “I’ve been humiliated enough tonight,” Iruka muttered, slumped forward with his head on his folded arms. “I don’t need to have a blackout, too.”

“’s not from us, ‘ruka,” Kotetsu told him, speech slurred from the three pints he’d consumed to keep pace. Iruka was intensely aware of the fact that his two companions were playing footsie under the table.

The bartender jerked a thumb towards a dark-haired figure at the far end of the bar, seated between two empty stools. “Courtesy of the gentleman over there, actually.”

Sweet hell, some stranger had felt sorry enough to buy him a drink. Iruka pressed his face against the table and covered his head with his arms, as though that would protect him from his own mortification. What the fuck was he supposed to do? He was too embarrassed to look anywhere near the bar. Was he supposed to go over there and say thank you? Make small talk? Iruka couldn’t remember the last time a stranger in a bar had wasted money on him.

“Oh shit, that’s Yamato,” Izumo said in an exaggerated whisper.

Iruka’s head popped up then and whipped in the direction of the bar to confirm the claim. His vision swam from the sudden movement, but when the haze and the headache dissipated, indeed it was Yamato he saw waving politely at him, though he was hard to recognize without the flak vest and the faceplate. Alcohol and surprise grappled with Iruka’s cognizance, leaving him incapable of doing much more than waving back dumbly.

From beside him, Kotetsu clicked his tongue. “Can’t believe they let ‘m out ‘n public already.” 

“Part of the decompression process,” Iruka guessed. Nothing about Yamato seemed particularly abnormal. His short brown hair was neatly combed and perhaps slick with pomade. With a beer bottle idly clasped in both hands, cheeks pleasantly flushed with drink and glowing beneath the bar lanterns, he looked nothing like a man who’d just weeks ago been repatriated from captivity.

Iruka didn’t know if he was purposely sitting alone or if others were keeping their distance, but either way, the chuunin was drawn to the empty stool next to him at the end of the bar. Driven by curiosity, his body seemed to move independent of his brain, and before he knew it, he’d grabbed his own beer bottle and made a tipsy trudge across the room to join him.

“Hi,” he said, with heavy emphasis on the H. He only wobbled slightly on the stool, which was a small victory.

“Hello, Iruka-sensei,” Yamato replied.

Now that he’d come over and sated his curiosity, he realized he had no idea what to say to the other man. They’d never spoken before or been formally introduced, but Iruka felt like he knew him by reputation and through the stories Naruto had regaled him with, about ghoulish faces and wooden traps. Not altogether different from Kakashi, if he were being honest.

That thought made his stomach sink.

He gently shook the full bottle he’d been gifted. “Thank you. It was very thoughtful.”

Yamato’s eyes were steel-dark and round like almonds, and the full force of his gaze was just as intense as Naruto made it seem. “It’s not a problem. I’ve been meaning to say hello. Naruto speaks fondly of you often.”

Iruka’s gaze shifted briefly to the corner booth where the source of his humiliation sat — alone, unbothered, and disinterested entirely in his surroundings. Had he been looking in Iruka’s direction just then? No, that was probably just wishful thinking. 

Glancing back to Yamato, he said, “Naruto has told me so much about you, too. I’m sorry we couldn’t meet under better circumstances.”

It occurred to him that he just said this to a very capable shinobi that had sacrificed himself to protect the student they both cared for and had wound up captive and tortured for his trouble. Not much was known publicly about what Yamato had undergone as a war prisoner, but with Kabuto and Orochimaru involved, the awful possibilities were boundless. And here he was, complaining that he’d been rejected by his crush like a pathetic teenager.

“I’m sorry, that was really insensitive of me,” Iruka said and hid his pink-cheeked embarrassment behind the bottle as he took a swig big enough to choke himself.

Mirth shone in Yamato’s eyes, and his lips parted with a genuine laugh. “Why? Don’t be sorry.” He gave Iruka an amused smile that crinkled his eyes and made him look quite handsome under the lantern glow. “I wish someone had bought me alcohol when Kakashi-senpai turned me down. I’m just paying it forward.”

Iruka was grateful he still had sober reflex enough to cover his mouth before he spat out his drink. “What!” he squawked. “You and Kakashi-san?”

The jonin’s face coloured with heat. “Ah, there was never an us. Just me. And some inane fantasies. It was a while ago.” He peered for a long time into the mouth of his own beer bottle, and then slowly took a drink. “Being in the hospital on painkillers makes you say stupid things to your friends sometimes.”

Curiosity once again tugged at Iruka’s inebriated mind. He’d shaped an entire perception of this man based on the stories of others — on rumours and reports and the ramblings of his dearest student — but he’d never once imagined he’d be the sort of person who Kakashi considered a friend. Then again, he’d never really thought about the kinds of friends Kakashi had, other than the persistently loud one in green spandex. Did Yamato know a version of Kakashi beneath the mask? Behind the bright orange porn novels? Beyond the reputation of the Sharingan?

“I would never have guessed.”

“There’s nothing to guess, really. He’s not a relationships guy, I suppose. He said I should find someone better.” He followed that last part with a hollow chuckle.

Iruka’s brows lifted. “That’s what he told me, too.”

Yamato shrugged. “He’ll go to his grave alone, at this rate. If that’s what he wants, that’s his business.” He smiled at Iruka. “We just have to live well.” 

“I can drink to that,” Iruka said, holding up his bottle to beckon Yamato for a toast, and the glass clink that echoed around them made him acutely aware of the looks they were getting. “Do you...” He scratched the scar on his nose tentatively. “Do you want to get out of here?”

To his credit, Yamato’s eyes only widened a fraction. “And be your drunk rebound?”

Iruka’s blood went cold. “Ah. Um. I-I mean— I didn’t—”

“It’s OK, Iruka-sensei,” Yamato laughed, both hands held up to placate him before he keeled off the barstool in mortification. “I’m the one who bought you a drink, after all. It’s just that I prefer transparency.” His voice dipped a level, barely heard over the din of conversation in the bar, and the sound twisted up Iruka’s insides until they felt molten. “I’m not uninterested.”

Despite his penchant for seeking long-term relationships, Iruka hadn’t been lying about his ability to do casual, too. Yamato was certainly attractive— broad shoulders and long fingers, sharp jaw and lips that quirked slightly sideways, short brown hair just long enough to grab, and dark eyes that could draw any gaze. While he couldn’t understand what Naruto found so terrifying about the man, he certainly did emit a sense of quiet lethality. 

And yeah— Anko had always insisted that was what did it for him. Quiet lethality.

_“Can’t get off unless you’re getting fucked by someone who could snap your neck, can you?”_

“My place?” Iruka asked, nervously gripping the neck of beer bottle between fingers that were slick with condensation. “We could leave together. Make him jealous.” 

“Jealous?” Yamato snorted. “You’re drunker than I thought. I’m not in the habit of bedding partners who are too drunk to consent.” His eyes flicked briefly in Kakashi’s direction. “Or ones who would call me by someone else’s name.”

While that was a perfectly laudable policy Iruka would have respected on any night, it did nothing to make him feel less miserable about the fact that he’d be waking up tomorrow hung-over and humiliated.

“I could walk you home, though,” Yamato offered. “Make sure you get to bed safely.”

Iruka smiled. “That would be OK.” 

They settled up, and then Yamato took his hand tentatively to help him off the stool. It all felt strange, but also secretly thrilling, to be leaving with someone for the show of it. Was it reckless and a bit juvenile? Possibly. But it was also satisfying to be reckless in public for once, instead of the restrained, vanilla schoolteacher everyone thought he was. He didn’t care who saw him. He didn’t even look back at Kotetsu and Izumo as he left.

* * *

Yamato didn’t let go of his hand the entire walk back to Iruka’s apartment. They kept a polite distance, connected only by the jonin’s tentative grasp around his fingers. It was not for lack of trying on Iruka’s part, since he had twice tried to sidle up and press their bodies together, but Yamato laughed nervously and pulled ahead each time he did.

At first the other man’s distance appeared to be some indication of intimacy issues. Maybe Yamato was one of those weird jonin who liked to fuck with the lights off, or only from behind. Jonin were all strange in various ways — they had to be, to take on the amount of murder missions required for active duty. Yamato probably doubly so since it was a mystery how being a POW had affected him psychologically. Kurenai was probably the most well-adjusted jonin he knew.

But as Iruka continued to push his boundaries, he soon came to realize that Yamato wasn’t reluctant. He was _shy_.

Oh, Iruka loved the shy ones.

His apartment was a corner unit only a few blocks from the bar, so their walk was brief. When he unlocked the front door, he asked, “Would you like to come in? I have tea.” His stomach was full of alcohol, and he didn’t think it could hold another drop of liquid, but it was always good to be a polite host.

“I did say I’d get you to bed safely.” Yamato’s cheeks were pink, and this time not from the booze. “Tea would be nice.”

His apartment was a little untidy, but Iruka had long since passed the threshold of “self-conscious about sweatpants on the couch” drunk. The place was small — a studio with a kitchenette and living space with a couch and a low table covered with half-graded tests. In the back stood a wide bookshelf full of framed photos and texts that doubled as a partition between the rest of the apartment and the bed. He snatched up the pair of pants, tossed them unceremoniously in the bathroom, and then set about putting the kettle on.

It had been an embarrassingly long time since he’d had anyone other than Naruto over. He was acutely aware of how much his home was like an open book of his life. His last casual hook-up had been with a civilian shopkeeper over at the bookstore in the capitol district, and Iruka hadn’t wanted to bring him into the world of a shinobi schoolteacher, even as unglamorous as it was. He had no clue how he would’ve explained the essays of ten-year-olds on proper shuriken technique.

Yamato had migrated to the bookshelf to admire the pictures while Iruka pulled a mug from the kitchen cupboard. With nary a glance, he knew which photo piqued the jonin’s interest, and it wasn’t the yellowing photo of Iruka as a child with his parents.

Water strained over leaves, filling the apartment with the scent of black tea. Iruka took the mug to Yamato, and they made an exchange — the tea for the photo the other man had picked up off the shelf. He let his fingers trail (“accidentally”) over the pale hands as they swapped. As suspected, it was the photo with more fingerprint smudges across the glass than he cared to admit — the photo of Team 7 from years ago. The same one Naruto had given him a copy of soon after it had been taken.

It was really the only good photo of Naruto he had. As the boy had grown older, he had also grown much harder to pin down for something so frivolous and sentimental. Ironic, considering how difficult it had been to get him to sit still as a student.

As it happened, it was also the only photo of Kakashi he had. Surely that had not escaped Yamato’s notice.

“You love your students,” the jonin said, his voice tinged with warm fondness.

“They’re your students, too,” Iruka pointed out.

Yamato had both hands around the mug and brought it to his lips. “Only sometimes,” he muttered into the tea, dark eyes suddenly cast downward.

Did he... did he sound wistful?

“You and senpai did well to prepare them for the hardships. To succeed and thrive and work as a team. Kakashi-senpai helped them hone their abilities. Taught them strategy and survival.” The steam from the mug curled in his vision as he took a sip. “But they also have tenacity and kindness and love — even for Sasuke.” Now those deep almond eyes were back on Iruka. “I think they must have gotten that from you.” 

Iruka set the photo back on the shelf and stepped hastily into Yamato’s space, curling his hands around the warm ones that clasped the mug. His heart had kicked into gear and was pumping so hard that the annoying headache behind his eyes was starting to fade, all focus shifting to the growing warmth in his chest. And lower still, to the heat pooling in his groin.

“Sweet talker,” he murmured. “You can’t just _say_ things like that if you’re not going to stay the night.” 

Yamato grinned, and before Iruka could react, he leaned forward and gently pressed their lips together.

To his credit, it only took a moment for the shock to register, and then his eyes fell shut, mouth parting in an invitation for a tongue to deepen the kiss. They were the same height, so there was no need for bending or stretching. Just the two of them pressed together, the cup of fresh tea between their hands, tepid in comparison to the heat of their mouths.

They kissed slow and long, lips parting for breath and then meeting again like a bashful game of chase. Without breaking contact, Iruka set the mug on the shelf and pulled Yamato flush against him. The fullness of his hard-on, trapped in the confines of his pants, pressed insistently into the jonin as he thrust his hips, and he was pleased to feel an answering hardness against his own.

Fuck, he wanted— _so much_. It had been months since Iruka had come from something other than his own hand. Yamato wasn’t Kakashi, but he was hot and here and hard and saying wonderfully sweet things.

“Come to bed with me,” Iruka pled.

Yamato slid his hands up Iruka’s chest, unzipped the flak vest and pushed it off his shoulders until it hit the floor. “Sensei, don’t tempt me, please.”

Iruka let himself be walked backwards, around the bookshelf until the backs of his knees hit the bed. They were still pressed together, sharing soft kisses. He sat back on the mattress and Yamato bent over him, hands catching in his hair to pull it free of the high ponytail. 

When they broke again for air, Iruka sprawled out on his back, brown hair a tangled mess around his head. He took Yamato’s hands and beckoned for the jonin to join him. His bed wasn’t the biggest, but it could still hold himself and another partner comfortably. “I’m not tempting enough like this?” 

“Trust me, you are.” Yamato closed his eyes and took a breath, then shook his head and pulled his hands from Iruka’s grasp. “But I can’t.”

The high-pitched whine that escaped his throat would have put even his most petulant students to shame. Stupid, honourable jonin. He was never going to get laid again, was he? He shook his head and scrabbled at his face in frustration.

“I told you I’d put you to bed, and I did.” The other man was squatting next to the bed now, putting himself at eye level with Iruka, who regarded him through errant strands of brown hair. “But I can’t do this with someone who won’t remember it in the morning.” 

Iruka spent an inordinate about of time trying to figure out how to glare at someone hornily. In all likelihood, he just looked constipated.

“At least kiss me again before you leave me with blue balls,” he groused. “Give me something to remember you by when I jerk off tonight.”

Yamato huffed out a laugh, then leaned over Iruka, bracing himself on the bed with a forearm. He slotted their mouths together with a moan, and their tongues brushed in eager exploration. “How about this?” he breathed against Iruka’s lips. “If you remember this in the morning, wait for me outside the yakiniku shop tomorrow at noon, and I’ll take you to lunch.”

Iruka’s eyes widened. “Are you asking me on a date?”

Yamato teased him with a nonchalant hum. “If you remember I asked.”

They met for another kiss, the last before the jonin rose to leave.

“Goodnight, Iruka-sensei.” He disappeared behind the bookshelf, then reappeared briefly with a glass of water which he set on the nightstand. "You should probably hydrate." He gave an awkward little wave before he made his way to the exit.

Iruka fisted his hands into the sheets, listening for the click of the door when it finally shut behind the other man. He rolled onto his front and screamed into his pillow, then snaked a hand down the front of his pants, intent on finishing the job they’d started.


	2. Chapter 2

Sometimes Tenzo spent the night staring at his fingertips, flexing his hand to watch each digit curl on his command. He would lie in bed and clench his fist in intervals, and every time sleep threatened to claim him, he would startle himself awake and do it again. Neurons firing correctly. A body that still obeyed the commands of his brain. Bone and muscle and skin fully formed, if not somewhat scarred. 

Human. Full of blood, and not sap. Limbs, and not branches.

He hadn’t been able to use his mokuton since they’d brought him back to Konoha, but he still felt it within him, within the chakra pulsing beneath his skin. It was a mental block, the psych-nins insisted, not a seal or a problem with his chakra pathways. He could still mould earth and water individually but could not manage the nature transformation that had once been as much a part of him as his lungs, that used to respond to his call as easily as each breath. Perhaps now it was a blessing that he was unable to summon what had been manipulated to harm the very village he’d sworn to protect.

But there were some nights, like tonight, where the call of the mokuton pulled so hard that he felt he would split into pieces if he didn't release it. On these nights he’d go for a walk, or such was his intent. In truth, what he recalled was leaving the apartment and ending up somewhere completely different — outside a training ground or a convenience store — with the walk itself a curious blank spot in his memory.

Sometimes he ended up at Kakashi’s door. Mostly because he was a masochist, but also because Kakashi was still his mentor and his friend. 

Tonight he was on the roof of his barracks, where he still resided even though he hadn’t been on active ANBU duty in over a year. The mokuton thrummed inside him, stirred by his alcohol-impaired inhibitions and the arousal that hadn’t fully faded, even after the long walk home from Iruka’s place. The cloudless and boundless night sky made him feel untethered and unravelled, like maybe he could fly apart or meld with the roof until he was fully consumed.

What would’ve happened if he’d stayed? His mind strayed to the image from that night, of Iruka’s brown hair, fanned out like twisted vines around his tan and flushed face, looking and smelling like the human equivalent of a vineyard right there in his bed. Would Tenzo have allowed himself to drink in that warmth, that comfort all night? When was the last time he’d fallen into bed with someone instead of simply taking what was offered in a bathroom stall or an alley or a secluded corner of a forest between mission stops? He had told Iruka that he wasn’t in the habit of bedding partners who were too drunk to consent, but truthfully, there was almost never a bed involved the few times Tenzo allowed himself to be physical with someone else.

Tonight he’d been so close.

Almost of its own volition, the chakra gathered in his palms until it blossomed into a bulb, and from the bulb grew a bright yellow crocus.

A foot scraped the roof tile next to him, and Tenzo snapped to attention. The chakra presence was not threatening or unfamiliar, which kept him settled enough not to reach for his weapons. 

“Hello, senpai.” He did not even need to turn to see the silver-haired shinobi approaching him.

“Making progress, I see,” Kakashi said with a hum. He was probably the only shinobi outside of his medical team that knew of his current affliction. During the restless nights that brought Tenzo to Kakashi’s doorstep, they had spent time sparring to see if staring down a chidori would jar loose his stubborn kekkei genkai. He hadn’t managed much more than a splinter in those matches.

Rarer still were the times when Kakashi invited him in, put his hands on Tenzo’s bare back to search for any sign of a hidden seal or to share chakra in hopes that a different elemental base might stimulate the mokuton’s release. Inevitably, it had also stimulated the latent feelings Tenzo had for the older man, as well as parts lower and more physical.

He’d put an end to those sessions rather quickly. It was enough to still be friends with a man who did not share his romantic inclinations. It was quite another, more unbearable act to allow the man to touch him, even with honourable intent.

Tenzo traced a finger along the stem of the flower and felt the thrum of his own chakra there. The flower bloomed at him, cheerfully yellow with the smell of faint saffron. “This is a first, actually.”

“Must’ve been a good night with the schoolteacher, then.”

Tenzo’s brows drew together in a frown. So then, he _had_ noticed them leave. “That’s none of your business.”

He turned to glare at Kakashi, but the other man wasn’t looking at him. He had his hands in his pockets, staring out in bland disinterest at the village skyline. Tenzo knew better than to fall for that front of casual indifference.

“I didn’t know normal was your type, Tenzo.” 

“Since when do you care about my type?” he snapped back, uncaring of how bitter he sounded. Kakashi was being nosy for the sake of being nosy, and because micromanaging Tenzo’s recovery was distracting him from coping with psychological issues of his own. He’d been doing this since they were young, and Tenzo had once been stupid enough to believe that meant the other man was interested in him as something more than a comrade. “Maybe I want something normal.”

Normal. The point of decompression was to adjust him back to normalcy, but normalcy had never had meaning to Tenzo. What was normal to a lab experiment who was living with someone else’s genes under his own skin? Who had been raised from childhood to be a mission-driven killing machine. Who assumed any identity given to him because he had none of his own.

Go outside. Eat at a restaurant. Have a drink at the bar. Be with other people. These were the things the psych team had told him to do as part of his reintegration, but they had never been normal for Tenzo. Normal was polishing his ANBU mask. Sharpening his weapons. Learning how best to hone his wood release so he could be of use to the village. What the fuck use to the village was he now? A weak captive. An intelligence leak. A liability. 

But... Watching Iruka have his affections rebuffed that night by Kakashi, the chuunin had reminded Tenzo so much of himself. Childishly naive to think he’d ever have a chance with a man who deliberately avoided intimacy. Except braver, because Tenzo would’ve never had the guts to be so open about it. Iruka was a curious anomaly among shinobi — a man unafraid of attachment and exposure, who wore his vast ranges of passion on his sleeve at all times. Someone who inspired equal parts fear in the hearts of jonin in the mission room and love in the hearts of his students. Someone who could foolishly invite a stranger like Tenzo into his home and into his bed and be so fucking brazen while he did it.

Kakashi clicked his tongue at Tenzo fondly. “You know shinobi like us don’t get to be normal.”

By the gods, Tenzo hoped Kakashi wouldn't micromanage all his jonin like this once he became Hokage. “I’m not a genius like you, senpai.” And if it came out sounding a little more sharp and sardonic than intended, that was fine. “Just because you won’t let yourself have it doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

Tenzo stroked the petals of the crocus in his palm. Iruka was far from normal, but he was the kind of normal Tenzo wished he could be.

* * *

He didn’t sleep these days, not until his body crashed from exhaustion, which happened every other day or so. Sometimes he whittled to distract himself. Other times he read. Kakashi had given him all his old copies of Icha Icha, since he’d bought the “remastered” release of the series last month. Tenzo was still not sure if the gift had been serious or in jest, but either way, the books had immediately gone under his bed. 

Being on decompression leave gave him plenty of opportunity to make some headway in the _Man’yoshu_, which he’d been meaning to read for years. He had quite a collection of old texts to tackle, in fact.

But that night he instead tore through his cupboards, looking for something that could double as a pot. He settled on an old blue tea tin, pricking holes into the bottom with a kunai before filling it with soil from the small herb garden planter on his windowsill. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a fine home for the crocus.

It sat on his counter, a bright spot of sunshine in his periphery as he tried to read. He would stare at it periodically, noting how out of place it seemed in the minimalism of his living space. It belonged in a livelier place, full of sunlight and photos and a messy array of graded papers. So he found a brush and wrote: “For Iruka-sensei” on the tin, then took it with him as he retraced his steps to the chuunin’s apartment.

It would be weird to sneak in through the window and leave it inside, wouldn’t it? Instead he left it on the windowsill, in plain view where Iruka would find it in the morning.

* * *

Sometime during his morning run, he realized he had no clue what people did on dates. Tenzo had never been on a date before, but he was pretty sure it involved things like being in public, eating, and talking. He didn’t really like doing any of those things — even eating wasn’t really that appealing these days. But like sleep, he appeased his body’s demands for food when he had to.

What was he supposed to talk about? He wasn’t an interesting person. Iruka, who willingly chose to spend his life teaching snot-nosed, hormonal brats to become would-be killers, seemed far more fascinating. And he was the closest thing Naruto had to family, so he must have a few good blackmail stories for Tenzo to keep in his back pocket for the next time he was assigned to a team with the blonde firebrand.

If they ever put him back on active duty.

Was he supposed to look different? Wear something nicer? He had a jar of gel in the bathroom cupboard that had been opened for the first time last night. Should he use that again? It didn’t seem like it had made a difference last night to Iruka, who had been flushed drunk and eager to touch places much lower than his hair.

(Would Tenzo need to bring a condom? He didn’t have any that weren’t expired.)

Eventually he decided on a plain yellow button-down shirt and slacks. Yellow seemed to be the only color that didn’t make him look like a hospital patient. He hadn’t worn civvies in... He couldn’t remember the last time. The clothes hung off his shoulders and hips loosely, so it had probably been from a time long before the war, when he had more muscle mass and hadn’t needed rehab just to get his hands to form the signs that were once second nature to him.

And then, rather abruptly, he removed the awkwardly fitting clothes altogether and put on his standard blue fatigues instead.

He walked to the Yakiniku-Q at noon and immediately regretted his choice of time. The place was packed, and though there was no sign of Iruka yet, the cacophonous roar of voices coming from inside the restaurant made his spine stiffen and his feet freeze in place before he could set foot through the door. Spending Friday evening at a mediocre, low-light bar was within the bounds of experiences he could tolerate. But it was an entirely different sort of sensory overload to brave a weekend lunch mob. Part of him should’ve been pleased to see a part of the village bustling so much post-war, but he stumbled back to collapse awkwardly on the small bench out front instead. 

He could’ve been there waiting for a moment or an hour. Every minute he sat there alone, staring unfocused at the ground with his arms resting on his knees, felt like an eternity. Maybe Iruka really did forget. Or maybe he was embarrassed by what had happened last night and didn’t want to see him now. It wouldn’t be the worst thing if Tenzo had to go home and escape the crowd.

“Yamato-san?” The yellow crocus appeared in his vision. Iruka was there when his head snapped up, looking quite well-rested and refreshed in a simple grey v-neck and his standard-issue pants. His brown hair was in a low ponytail gathered at his nape for a change, and he smelled faintly like soap. 

“You remembered after all,” Tenzo said, and he didn’t know whether he was surprised or delighted.

“How could I forget when someone left me such a kind reminder?”

Iruka held the tea tin with the crocus between both hands, close to his chest, and it cast a sunny glow against his honey-bronze skin. Tenzo tried to reconcile it with the last image Iruka left in his mind — flushed and wanton and reeking of alcohol — and it made his breath catch in his chest.

“Are you OK?” Iruka asked. He paused to peer into the restaurant window, and his face relaxed in understanding. “Ah, it’s busy, isn’t it?”

Tenzo nodded, a little embarrassed. “I didn’t really think this through well.”

“Then it’s a good thing you asked out a teacher, isn’t it?” His look was discreetly smug in a practiced way that had probably come from years spent as a children’s problem-solver. “If you’re up for takeout, we can get something and take it to my favourite lunch spot. It’s far enough into the woods behind the Academy that I can usually hide from the kids when Suzume-sensei has them for recess.”

The relief that washed over Tenzo was palpable. “Yes. Let’s do that, please.”

So he bought two bento boxes from the market, then met Iruka back at his apartment, where the chuunin was waiting for him with a blanket and a bottle of sake. He shoved the sake into Tenzo’s free hand, then reached for a small bottle on the kitchen counter and discreetly slipped it into his pocket, but not before Tenzo could recognize it for what it was: lubricant.

“Sensei! What kind of date do you think this is?” he asked with a laugh.

“Shut up, you,” Iruka snapped playfully. “There’s not a single part of last night I don’t remember.”

They shared a blushing glance at a familiar mug, drying now on the dish rack by the sink. Iruka had set the crocus on the windowsill directly over it.

“Maybe I don’t put out on a first picnic,” Tenzo said.

Iruka’s guffaw was sharp and loud and shook his whole body. “Naruto didn’t tell me you were funny.” 

“Ah. Well...” he muttered at the floor, and then Iruka yanked him by his elbow out the door.

* * *

Their picnic spot was a wooded alcove about 100 metres behind the Academy’s training yard, lush with the foliage of deciduous trees. They spread out the blanket in a clearing near a fallen, hollowed out oak. The canopy of branches was just thick enough to keep out the direct sunlight, but it wasn’t so dark or so far that he could fully lose sight of the fence around the schoolyard. It was a peaceful place full of the ambient noise of birds and afternoon cicadas, and it beckoned Tenzo’s mokuton, urging him to build a campground with a little wooden hut for meditation. Not that he could at the moment. 

They ate gyoza and katsudon and rice, and Tenzo pointed out the seven grasses of autumn. This set Iruka off on a spiel about how, as a child, he’d made a porridge out of the seven grasses of autumn because he thought it unfair that people didn’t eat them like they ate the seven grasses of spring. And then he’d discovered the reason why very quickly after he’d gotten sick all over his mother’s favourite coat.

“It’s a shame I don’t get to teach literature to the kids. No one appreciates the classics anymore.” Iruka rubbed the back of his head. “I sound like an old man, don’t I?”

“Do you read the _Man’yoshu_, Iruka-sensei?” Tenzo asked.

The chuunin nodded. “My mom used to read all the old poems to me as a kid. _Makura no soshi_ and _Kokinshu_, all that. Her books were one of the only things I think she brought with her when she and Dad came to the Fire Country. At least, that’s all I can glean from the stuff they left after they died.”

Tenzo paused and swallowed his food slowly, feeling disconcerted at the sudden shift in topic. “I’m sorry. You must miss them terribly.”

But Iruka seemed nonplussed, if his shrug was anything to go by. “Yeah. I do. It was a long time ago, but... it’s hard to read the books sometimes. And be alone with old memories.”

Yes, Tenzo knew quite a lot about being alone with only his memories. “Maybe we could—” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. “Maybe we could read it together sometime.”

“That would be nice,” Iruka said warmly.

Something uncertain in the teacher’s expression made it clear he wanted to ask a question of Tenzo in kind. Maybe about his parents or his childhood, of which he had neither. Danzo was gone, and so was the curse mark on his tongue — one of the few pleasant surprises Tenzo had come home to. But his time in ANBU, in Root, in that godsforsaken tank — it still felt forbidden to talk about.

Instead, Iruka said, “It must have been hard for you, too. To be the only mokuton user in the village. To not have anyone to share that with.”

“Ah,” Tenzo paused. “It’s OK, really. I had Kakashi-senpai, and—”

And— no way was he going any further with that. 

“It doesn’t matter anyway.” There he went, disconnecting his mouth from his brain again before he could stop himself. “I can’t really use it anymore.”

Iruka blinked at him with a concerned sort of perplexity, then set his bento box aside and scooted close enough that their shoulders touched. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “I mean I can’t really use it anymore.”

Brows furrowed, the chuunin went from casual weekend date to Monday morning teacher, even without the full uniform and the high ponytail. “That shouldn’t be possible. To simply lose a nature transformation kekkei genkai. It’s not like a dojutsu where someone can physically remove it.”

“No,” Tenzo shook his head. “It’s not gone. I just can’t use it anymore. It’s hard to explain.” And then, instead of trying to further elucidate all the disarray in his broken brain, he signed the simple snake-boar combination and summoned the jutsu that would have normally regenerated the fallen oak next to them. No brand new wood growth emerged. As expected. 

Rather unexpectedly, a yellow crocus wormed it’s way out of the hollow bark, curving upwards toward the delicate rays of sunlight as the petals opened.

“Huh,” Iruka said.

“It was supposed to be the whole tree.” His mokuton had never had a patch on Hashirama’s, but he had been growing trees since before age 10. It was the stuff of children.

“You grew a flower, though.” 

“It’s not even in-season,” Tenzo whined.

Now the teacher’s eyes were alight with curiosity, like the promise of a challenge lay somewhere close by. “Show me again,” he instructed, and it felt like he gazed straight into Tenzo’s core when he spoke. “Slower, this time.”

Warm hands came up to grasp Tenzo’s wrists. When he formed the signs again, it was as though he were moving though water and earth itself. Iruka gradually settled over him until the weight urged Tenzo onto his back. The force of his body hitting the blanket kicked up a gust of dirt and leaves.

_Tree_, he thought. _Make a fucking tree._

Iruka was straddling his hips now, even as he still held Tenzo’s wrists.

_Don’t force it._ Fuck, that thought, that scholarly voice, hadn’t come from Tenzo. It had been planted there in his mind by—

“Iruka,” he gasped, vision locked into the brown eyes above him. Chakra was flowing through him now, like warm sun into his cells, storing energy, releasing breath. _Into_ him, not out. “Is this a genjutsu?”

“Sort of,” the chuunin said. “It’s a yin release that lets me break down barriers between mind and body. I use something similar with my students who are having trouble with ninjutsu release.” He looked slightly sheepish at the intrusion into Tenzo’s consciousness. “I don’t usually do the chakra sharing part. I’m sorry, I should’ve asked first.”

Tenzo shifted his hips upward, letting Iruka feel the extent of the shared chakra’s effect on his body. The place where the blood and the energy pooled and converged until it filled his cock. “I can see why you don’t. Doubt you want this kind of reaction from your students.”

“NOPE!” Iruka yelped, his face so flushed that the scar on his nose had turned crimson. “Just you.”

Snake-boar. He made the signs again, and the chuunin gripped his wrists tighter, pushing in more chakra to try and trigger the release. It was triggering some release, anyway, though perhaps not the most helpful one. They shared a natural elemental affinity, and the brush of Iruka’s water chakra against his own made the mokuton sing inside him even as his cock pulsed insistently in his trousers.

This was quite different from the chakra sharing he’d tried with Kakashi. They didn’t share an affinity, of course, but neither had the older man tried to push beyond any mental barriers. Iruka’s efforts felt like a gentle tendril of energy against his mind, seeking an answer to a question, but not trying to take it by force.

By force, no. That was too close to— Too much like the touch of Kabuto and Madara and—

His mind was a mess. The signals were misfiring with his chakra pathways — at least, that’s what the psych-nins had told him. If he didn’t get rid of this mental block, they’d have to get a Yamanaka or someone to re-wire his head, and fuck if he was going to let them do that. Fifty-nine children had died so that Tenzo could walk away with a splinter of the First Hokage’s legacy, but he’d rather spend the rest of his life growing pathetic flowers than get the ninjitsu equivalent of a lobotomy just so he could continue to be used as a weapon of wood.

“I’m sorry,” Iruka murmured. “I’m not skilled enough. This is all I can do. Something is there, but it’s shutting everything out. Maybe someone like Kakashi-san could do more.” He collapsed with a groan on the blanket beside Tenzo, and the jonin rolled to face him.

He took Iruka’s face in his hands and covered that inviting mouth with his own before it could say anything more foolish. He guided the chuunin’s hand between them, pulled down his fly to release his erection into the warmth of that honey-toned grip. Already it was full and heavy and slick with precome. “You don’t have to be anyone else or do anything else for me, sensei.”

“Fuck,” Iruka groaned into his mouth. He was working down his own fly now, and within moments Tenzo felt the hard brush of another cock against his own. Iruka’s hand closed around them both and began to stroke.

He traced along the edge of Iruka’s jaw, roaming further back to catch strands of brown hair between his fingers. At some point the tie had slipped out of the chuunin’s ponytail, leaving the locks to fall in loose layers around his face and along his neck. It was a sight to behold — brown eyes half-lidded with eyelashes flitting and a smattering of light freckles visible across a scarred nose. Tenzo couldn’t stop himself from taking those swollen red lips in for another kiss.

Iruka twisted his wrist on an upstroke, tracing a thumb along the head of each cock, mixing their precome together until his grasp was slick enough to increase the rhythm. Little grunts of pleasure ghosted between their mouths. The tinges of shared chakra still coiled in his chest with an increasing pressure that threatened to burst if he didn’t disperse it.

The ache in his balls signalled the release that was building at an embarrassingly fast pace. It had been months since the last time he’d come, and even longer since he’d come with the help of another person. For so many years it had been Kakashi’s long fingers, the steel of his eyes, the deep timbre of his voice in Tenzo’s mind as he’d jerked out a release into his own hand. Now he had bronze skin and chestnut hair to savour as the orgasm rushed to meet him.

“I’m gonna come,” he gasped, feeling his cock jerk and his seed sputter across Iruka’s fingers until it spilled out in earnest between them. Bursts of light flickered like stars behind his eyelids, little sparks of chakra dancing at his fingertips. Iruka leaned in to dig his teeth into the lobe of Tenzo’s ear as he moaned out his own release soon after.

He could still hear Iruka saying his name in the quiet moments after, when the world swam in his head in an effort to re-establish his equilibrium. The soft call of “Yamato, Yamato-san,” floated in his mind — a faint summon from somewhere far away that slowly came into sharp clarity as he returned to coherence. When he lifted his head from the blanket, he saw Iruka gesturing at him frantically, eyes wide and full of wonder.

The clearing around them was full of bright yellow crocuses.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief interlude from Kakashi's POV. It needed to be written to bridge me to the next chapter, so I figured I would put it up by itself. It's a good opportunity to explore the third side of the triangle.

As it turned out, the worst part of becoming leader of the most powerful shinobi village in the world wasn’t the paperwork. It wasn’t the stuffy clothes or the people who addressed him with the same formal language they had once used with his father. It wasn’t even the overwhelming burden of expectations he could never hope to live up to.

No, the worst part was that Kakashi had to appoint an entire personal council just to keep the formal Konoha Council off his case.

“It’s a pain, I know,” Tsunade told him, one hand working away the beginnings of a tension headache. She sat opposite of Kakashi over the very desk she would be relinquishing soon. The swirl of the leaf symbol carved into its front drew his attention until his gaze grew unfocused in thought. “They have the best interests of the village in mind, but you’re going to need an inner circle who will be in your corner if—” She cleared her throat. “_When_ you don’t see eye-to-eye on things.”

Impressive how swiftly the redundancy of governance plagued him, even before he assumed his new role. It was bureaucracy all the way down. What the hell had he done to deserve this? 

“Can’t you do it?” Kakashi asked.

“Yes, I will be on-hand to advise you for a time. We’ll call it phased retirement.” Tsunade’s grimace was as sarcastic as her eye roll. “But you’ll need more than that.” Delicately manicured fingers ticked off the requirements one-by-one. “A personal guard. Someone to replace Nara Shikaku as a military advisor. An administrative advisor to keep up with the paperwork. And an operational advisor to help you manage the workings of the village and the diplomacy.”

Had headaches suddenly become contagious? Kakashi could feel one forming behind his eyes already. Face glazed with boredom and weariness, he scratched his silver hair and sighed. “It’s a lot of people to do one job.” 

“The Hokage is Delegator-in-Chief, my dear brat.” She gestured with arms outstretched to the whole of the office and out the window to the wide expanse of the village below. “Lesson number one: you can’t do it all on your own.”

Kakashi knew that lesson well. He had learned it firsthand the day he’d lost an eye and gained a new one from the comrade he’d left bleeding out beneath a rock. The ghost of Obito’s sharingan ached, as it often did these days, causing him to touch the scar on his left eye. For so long he’d had the comfort of someone else’s sight to guide him through life, but now that he had only normal eyes… now he was fully alone, even as the ebb and flow of village life bustled around him. 

“Shikamaru will be a fine heir to his father’s legacy,” he said. “And surely Shizune can stay on as long as you’re around to provide assistance.”

“She can, but she won’t want to do this forever, either. I’m sure she’d like to move on from babysitting duty eventually.” Tsunade glanced at the office door, which, while firmly shut behind them, did nothing to conceal the shadow of her assistant’s presence in the light beneath it. “And Shikamaru is still a lazy boy in some respects. He is a strategic genius who’s doing good work with the Union, but it’ll be a while before he learns to talk back to you when necessary.”

Kakashi snorted. “That’s a role I’m sure you’re eager to transition into.”

“Trust me,” she said and jerked her thumb at the flask of sake on the shelf behind her. “I’m the one who’ll have to listen to your drunk bitching about the council. I really have no desire to boss anyone around anymore.”

Well, that was bullshit. Tsunade would be bossing around anyone who’d listen from her grave, and she’d certainly be tormenting Jiraiya in the great beyond.

“You’ll need someone else willing to put you in your place,” she continued, with all the subtlety of someone who already knew the suggestion she had in mind. Kakashi wished she’d get on with it already. “Someone organized, who can anticipate and manage your shortcomings. A problem-solver who knows the needs of the village well, especially these new generations of nin as they grow and mature. And someone who understands procedure and diplomacy, but is not so hardened from field work that they do it without empathy and kindness.”

Kakashi gazed at her flatly as his stomach sank. “You’ve just described Umino Iruka.”

To her credit, the Godaime did not bother feigning surprise at his ability to decipher her. “An excellent suggestion. Though I am concerned he might have a conflict of interest, given his feelings for you.”

A silver brow arched in surprise. “My Lady—” 

“Save it,” she ordered with a dismissive wave. “It’s the worst-kept secret in the village. Have you fucked him yet?”

“What? No!” The question knocked him into dazed uncertainty more effectively than any punch of hers ever could have. “Of course not. I told him I’m not interested.”

“Good! You’re both adults. You should have no problem with this arrangement. He’s a professional brat-herder, and he keeps more poorly written reports off my desk than anyone I’ve ever encountered, so he should be more than qualified to keep your ass in line.”

Of course she was right, which was the whole problem. Plenty of people had been tasked with keeping Kakashi from straying too far down difficult paths in his three decades of life, but few of them were as suited for the job of supporting Kakashi as a leader than Iruka — the man who cared when no one else bothered. One of Konoha’s ugliest shortcomings had always been that it cared too little about the things and the people that had fallen through the cracks. Naruto. Sasuke. Tenzo, and every other Root shinobi Danzo had ever poisoned with his influence. Who better to help Kakashi be the village’s eyes in the places no one bothered to look?

She was also right that Iruka’s love-stricken glances at Kakashi were well-worn fodder in the jonin rumour mill. Iruka would probably be humiliated if he’d known how deep the romantic confession betting pool went. It had been going on for so long that Kakashi had been holding onto naive hope he might never have to deal with it.

So much for that. Letting down Iruka as gently as possible had been as much a priority as it was when Tenzo had made the same confession to him years ago. Truthfully, Iruka was not unappealing or unattractive as a partner. Kakashi had always found him equal parts intriguing and enticing. Fun to rile up just to see the way the scar on his nose turned red. Maybe some other, less weary version of himself would have accepted Iruka’s affection without hesitation, but Kakashi had seen what love had done to Obito. It was too fresh in his mind for him to want any part of it.

“How is he supposed to keep me in line when he’s too busy keeping children from cutting their own fingers off?”

Tsunade looked distinctly unimpressed as she crossed her arms over her generous bosom. “You’re right. He’s due for a promotion. Now shut up and stop fighting me on this.”

“Fine,” Kakashi muttered. “But I want Cat as my personal guard.” If he was being forced to make concessions, then it was only fair he ask for one in return.

But the Godaime snapped “No” almost immediately. Golden eyes darkened in a dare for Kakashi to challenge her. “Cat has been deactivated from duty.”

“Then reactivate him.” Tenzo had been his kohai for over a decade. Making him sit around and wait for something to re-set in his brain wasn’t what he needed. The longer he was allowed to stew in anxiety over his affliction, the further back it would set his progress.

But the village’s chief medi-nin was stubbornly steadfast on the hospital’s course of action. “That would be a dereliction of my duty as Hokage, as it would be of yours. Yamato is not well, and until he’s cleared for active duty by the psych team, he cannot re-join ANBU, either. You know this, Kakashi.”

Beneath her hardened exterior was a fierce protectiveness for the operative she had personally chosen to be Naruto’s guardian. Perhaps — as with Kakashi himself — she was burdened with guilt over what had transpired when she’d sent him to that island in the Lightning Country. No one would deny it had been the right call given the brevity of intelligence they’d had, but regrets were sometimes not borne of rationality.

“He is my best operative. He’s done more than enough in service to this village,” she told him. “I know you think you know what’s best for him, but even if he does recover use of his mokuton, do you really want to force him back into black-ops?”

Kakashi didn’t know what he wanted, other than for a part of his life that was thoroughly in upheaval to return to normal in some capacity. Every shinobi was required to risk their life in service to the village and the Hokage, but there were few people he trusted to protect his life more than Tenzo. Kakashi would not be Hokage without Tenzo at his right hand. He knew if he gave the order, his kohai — whose only identity had ever been founded in the duties he could perform for the village — would take the role without question.

But was that even fair? To Tenzo? To Konoha? 

“As you said, he is the best operative. I can wait,” Kakashi decided. “I’ll wait til Cat— til Tenzo is ready.” 

Tsunade folded her hands together on her desk, as though in protection of an object she was not yet ready to cede into his care. “And if he’s never ready?” 

He didn’t know. They called him a genius, but he knew so little. And they wanted him to be _in charge_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: I'm going to write this quick confrontation between Kakashi and Iruka.
> 
> Also me 4000 words later: *sobbing* Please stop talking.

“Are you certain you want to do this?” 

The classroom chatter of fifth-years and the crisp rustling of the chakra papers they passed around nearly swallowed up Iruka’s question. A lot of fire affinities with this crop — naturally, given their home nation. The singed paper was a mess to clean, but Iruka did it with a heart full of joy every year. And this year especially, given how much the population had suffered in the war. A few water and lightning affinities were scattered about the bunch, and he spotted one or two piles of soil on a few desks, but no wind users that he could tell.

It was no small blessing that no one ended up with a clean sheet this year. Explaining to aspiring shinobi (and their parents) that chakra papers were never duds ranked among the worst conversations he had to have as a teacher. 

Yamato perched on Iruka’s desk, observing the chaos with placid levity. “Iruka-sensei, you’re not my commanding officer. I wouldn’t agree to help you if I didn’t want to. It’s not even the first time I’ve helped with this type of lesson.”

Ah, yes. Easy to forget that Yamato’s assistance with Team 7 had involved some remedial reinforcement of concepts Iruka had not successfully beat into a certain blonde’s thick skull. He had to bite back the automatic feeling of inadequacy. Naruto was a special case. 

The scar on his nose itched in embarrassment. “Sometimes it really does take a village,” Iruka laughed.

Teaching was not a glamorous job, nor was it one that permitted Iruka to retain his dignity, especially in a shinobi village full of teenagers whose skills had long surpassed his own. Many of them he’d taught himself. That instinctual pride was the gratifying trade-off, save for the heartbreak that came from the ones who ran off to get themselves killed despite every effort Iruka had put into preparing them for survival.

Sandaime used to tell him that Senju Hashirama founded Konoha on an open heart. The Will of Fire wasn’t simply a dedication to loving and protecting those in the village — it was an endless and often counterintuitive desire to retain all the messy aspects of being human in a world of brutality, to seek connection and camaraderie and to retain compassion, even when surrounded by pain and death. Maybe that was why the old man used to say Iruka embodied the Will of Fire so well.

_There is so much of Shodaime in you. Why would I not want someone like you shaping the future of our village?_

So Iruka had his calling, but it didn’t mean he always had to like it, nor did it mean that others understood it with the same sagacity as his former mentor. It didn’t make Iruka deaf to the snide remarks and the backhanded compliments from some jonin or, hell, even fellow chuunin like Mizuki — a person who had once claimed to care for Iruka. They may have thought him weak, but Iruka buoyed himself on the scrutiny of others, dug in his heels and worked harder out of spite. If his dedication to his calling made him weak in the eyes of others, so be it. No one had to understand why Iruka did his job other than Iruka himself. And the Hokage, of course.

It certainly didn’t mean Yamato had to understand, much less agree to Iruka’s spur-of-the-moment proposal to assist him in an outdoor demonstration. But he had. And he did. And now here he was, dressed in a pressed-clean uniform and flack jacket, forehead-protector affixed, helping Iruka herd his class to the training yard like he was ready for battle. 

“Last chance to back out,” he teased the jonin as he propped the side door open with his hip to allow his class to file into the afternoon sun. “It might get a little messy.” Yamato trailed behind like some sort of unseemly shepherd, bearing the eyes of a man who walked a fine line of sleep-deprivation enough to find normally disconcerting things amusing. Though Iruka didn’t dare pry, concern was starting to bubble at the back of his mind.

Yamato smirked. “You can’t scare me that easily.”

Fortunate that Iruka had chosen to do this today, probably the last nice autumn day Konoha would have before the leaves grew ruddy and golden and the temperatures dropped. Dry and bright and perfect for moulding earth and water in a nature transformation demonstration out in the yard, amidst the few wooden targets and shuriken dummies they’d managed to salvage from Pain’s destruction. It was his first outdoor demonstration since the Academy had started back up after the war. Water and earth were the only elements he would summon in a classroom setting. Parents would hunt him down with pitchforks if he let the kids play with fire or lightning, and there were so few wind users in Konoha. Asuma had always been busy, before—

So water and earth it was, except it had been three years since he’d even been able to do this demonstration. This was a lesson he’d developed with Mizuki, conveniently an earth user to contrast Iruka’s water affinity. After Mizuki’s betrayal, it had been hard to find another earth user with the time to replace him. Until now.

It was not lost on Iruka that the only men he’d ever done this demonstration with were ones he’d known intimately. Though he and Yamato hadn’t shared more than a few kisses in the quiet walks they’d taken since their picnic date last weekend.

“All right,” Iruka called to the class, motioning for them to form a circle — with wide berth — around the two adults. “Theory is nice, but sometimes practice is more helpful. And more fun.” A grin spread across his lips as he says the last part to his jonin companion. 

Truth be told, Iruka had a secondary motive for bringing Yamato along. Ulterior was— well, it was too sinister a description given his only real intent was to help foster learning, both in his students and in Yamato himself. Sometimes the students who struggled the most benefited from working through their problems step-by-step. And what better way to do that than through teaching others?

The warm brush of their combined chakra still lingered beneath his skin. Yellow crocuses bloomed behind his eyes when he closed them, and inevitably that reminded him of the harsh finality with which Yamato’s mind had shut him out after too much stimulation. Overly complicating ninjitsu technique was often the easiest way to get stuck. Perhaps getting back to elemental basics with Iruka’s class would spark something in Yamato’s wayward mokuton. 

The demonstration was simple at its core: earth and water were opposing elements, and a water user could easily be overpowered by an earth user, as Iruka demonstrated when he summoned a wet tendril from a nearby bucket, only for it to be absorbed when Yamato pressed a hand to the ground and summoned a column of earth with practiced ease. They earned a smattering of oohs from their audience for the effort, and Yamato glanced at him in bemusement at praise for something he’d summoned as easily as a breath.

_We can’t all be genius jonin_, Iruka thought wryly.

To the class, he said, “It’s easy to look at this and say earth and water are in conflict. But let’s look at it a different way.”

Again Iruka summoned a wave of water, this time hurling it straight toward Yamato. The jonin responded instinctually by elevating the ground directly beneath his own feet to evade, much to the delight and awe of the students who both clapped and jumped as the jolt and crack of earth split until it nearly touched their feet. 

“No one type of elemental chakra is inherently stronger than another,” Iruka explained. “The reason elements are more or less powerful when exposed to certain others is not because of inherent weakness. In fact, it’s the opposite. They create a synergy.”

“What is synergy?” A little blonde head asked — possibly a Yamanaka child. Iruka couldn’t fully see the crowd on the other side of Yamato’s earth pillar. He sent a look up at the jonin, as if to ask, _you want to take this one?_

Yamato squatted low so that his voice could project to the gathering below. “It’s when two elements combine to make something stronger. Earth is strong against water because they are meant to work in harmony. Together they make plants and flowers and trees.”

“And mud,” another student chirped.

“Great idea!” Iruka smiled. “So tell me, if I add more water to Yamato-san’s earth jutsu here, what do you think will happen?” 

“Sensei,” Yamato warned carefully. “Don’t do it.”

Pranksters never really grew up; they only learned to be more strategic in the opportunities they exploited. The childhood legacy of Iruka the Imp hadn’t died, but rather morphed into the reputation of a chuunin schoolteacher who made unsuspecting jonin cry if they thought they could get away with cutting corners around him. If Yamato was intent on dating Iruka (was that what they were doing?), then surely he had to know of Iruka’s reputation. At the very least Kakashi, who made a sport out of pushing Iruka’s buttons, would’ve told his friend at some point.

After a pause to allow his companion an opportunity to escape, he beckoned deep into his chakra reserves till he felt the pull of a wave three times larger than his previous demonstration forming beneath his palms, it’s magnitude tipping it toward the pillar. It crested and crashed into the earth until the two elements melded into a slick tide that yanked Yamato off balance and dragged him back toward the ground. The smirk that threatened to break though Iruka’s professional demeanour died with a yelp as the jonin used his momentum to launch himself sideways, into the teacher, pushing them both into the muddy mess that congealed in the place where they once stood. 

They landed with a squelch, Iruka on his backside and Yamato beside him on his knees, caked to his ankles in mud. “Mudslide jutsu, huh?” the jonin asked with a burgeoning smile that belied any affront in his tone.

Iruka’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he cleared his throat to compose himself. “A very powerful augmentation of earth with water,” he clarified to the crowd of snickering students that surrounded them. “Ideal for levelling a playing field.” 

“You could’ve just asked me to do it myself,” Yamato said.

Iruka couldn’t contain the smirk that time. “Where’s the fun in that?”

And, well, maybe he deserved the handful of mud Yamato plopped onto his ponytail in retribution. As well as the hell that broke loose afterward, when some students took it as invitation to join them in the mudslinging. The laugh that burst forth from his chest was drawn out by some unknown gravitation between them, and it didn’t dissipate even when he received a face full of muck from a jonin whose whole form shook with unbridled joy. 

Yamato laughed like it was something both foreign and genuine, like his body had been waiting its whole life to do it.

* * *

Sticky and filthy was perhaps not the best way to send a class home to their parents, but it was hard to be upset when those same students went home with brimming eagerness to recount the day’s lesson. Their energy left Iruka buoyant even as the cold mud dripped from his hair. Cautious of the staff still lingering after classes had dismissed, Iruka body flickered himself and Yamato into the classroom and sent a shadow clone to the nearest supply closet to procure clean uniforms for the two of them. 

“Next time I’ll tell you to bring a change of clothes,” Iruka told him.

“Oh, next time?” Yamato arched a dirt-smeared brow. Arms crossed, he shifted his weight to the leg not completely caked in mud with the practiced ease of a man who had probably completed a handful of S-ranked missions covered in more objectionable substances.

Iruka hummed in pleased affirmation. Mud did nothing to dampen Yamato’s attractiveness or the kindling of desire that still flared in Iruka’s gut. Autumn’s perfume lingered beneath the scent of earth on his body, the whiff of it causing Iruka’s pulse to quicken. A staccato, rabbit rhythm. It was a wild and strange thing, for the smell of dirt to make him eager to fuck another man. 

He busied himself by stripping his soiled flak vest to distract from the heavy weight of Yamato’s almond eyes. “It’s not quite as exciting as drudging through blood and guts to chase down missing-nin, I’ll admit.” He shoved the vest into an empty box he’d fished out of the classroom closet. Somehow he managed to make even that task seem like it was completed by an awkward dope.

The whiff of earth intensified when Yamato stepped closer into his space. “There are worse ways to get dirty,” he said, voice all heat, enough to ignite red splotches on Iruka’s cheeks when his head jerked up. “Maybe this is the kind of exciting I want.”

They stepped together until the magnetic pull between them closed the distance. Yamato’s hand was cool beneath Iruka’s chin, smearing mud underneath his bottom lip before their mouths met.

As far as kisses went, this one was gritty and wet, lips heavy and cold from the very elements they’d sought to control. They were in too messy a state for it to last. But it left Iruka gaping when Yamato pulled back and breathed a quiet exhale, scented of musk and earth, which sent his blood coursing lower to fill his cock. This wasn’t the type of dirty kiss he envisioned, but he wasn’t about to complain.

Iruka’s bunshin walked in at some point. The jonin stepped away to murmur thanks for the proffered uniforms, and the clone disappeared with a pop, leaving the real Iruka flushed with embarrassment at the newly acquired memories of watching his own body be ravished.

“There’s a shower in the teacher’s lounge,” Iruka said hoarsely. Sandaime had it installed after the Great Naruto Itching Powder incident, and it was one of the few parts of the Academy that had withstood Pain’s attack. “You can have it first. It only, ah— fits one, though.”

“I can shower at home,” Yamato said. “It’s no bother.”

Iruka pressed his hips into Yamato’s so there could be no mistaking what the kiss had done to him. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to end up jerking off in a shower less than a handful of metres from his colleagues’ offices. “I don’t know if I can wait that long.”

“Well, then.” Yamato laughed softly. “I’d better be quick. Ah. With the shower, I mean. Not the, uh—”

Iruka shoved him towards the door. “Just hurry.”

The paperwork from the morning’s assignment sat ungraded on his desk, precisely stacked and alphabetized — a centering presence in the otherwise chaotic tilt of Iruka’s world. The reluctance to re-sort them kept him from wanting to shove the whole pile onto the floor, strip off his soiled uniform, and have Yamato bend him over the desk when he returned, risk of discovery by his colleagues be damned.

He couldn’t remember the last time lust had distracted him so thoroughly from work. He and Mizuki used to fuck sometimes during lunch breaks, if a private space became available, but it had always been at Mizuki’s insistence and on Mizuki’s schedule. Yamato, though, seemed genuinely interested in the parts of Iruka’s life beyond the minimum required for fucking: his job, his interests, his hobbies. As a high-ranking jonin, Yamato had willingly participated in a demonstration to teach pre-genin things he’d probably mastered before puberty. He’d—_wanted_ to do it. What’s more, in the week since their date he, had taken time out of his day, when he could, to spend it with Iruka in his favourite quiet places, chatting about literature or ninjutsu theory.

Iruka occupied the most boring fucking world in all of Konoha, yet Yamato willingly wanted to share that space with him. Every person Iruka had desired a relationship with before — Mizuki, Kakashi — had left him seeking something to prove. Kakashi, especially, was the kind of elite and enigmatic presence that intrigued Iruka even when their interactions threatened to drive him insane. The fury of their arguments left him brimming with passion to dig up answers or expertise that could one-up the man. But Yamato, who was as elite as Kakashi, was content to simply exist alongside him. To respect his boundaries and limitations and map out something akin to a relationship however it came.

Or however _they_ came, which so far had only been one time together. Being wanted so thoroughly without the burden of expectation that he often put on himself to be different for the object of his desire — less needy for Mizuki or more skilled and intelligent for Kakashi — was unexpectedly thrilling and arousing. Suddenly it was possible for Iruka’s brain to accept that he was good enough for someone as he was. Iruka loved in the most un-shinobi-like fashion: with the same open heart as Shodaime’s, with the longing for a day when he could bare himself fully for someone who could do the same.

Fuck, maybe he wanted that with Yamato.

* * *

The voice that cut through Iruka’s reverie was unexpected considering it had not been preceded by a knock. “Am I bothering you, sensei?” 

The classroom door slid open with a sharp clatter, loud enough to snap Iruka to attention. Hatake Kakashi himself slouched in the open doorway, framed in the early evening light from the hallway that tinged his sliver hair deep grey like an oncoming storm. Some stray spot on Iruka’s cheek had monopolized Kakashi’s gaze — a clump of dried mud that Iruka rubbed away with eyes downcast. He was still not used to the full brunt of the jonin’s two-eyed stare.

“Kakashi-san, can I help you?” Iruka sat back in the chair behind his desk, where he’d escaped to recollect his composure before Yamato returned, and tried not to sound stiff. He failed. 

“Rough day with the class?”

Kakashi was the worst small talker Iruka had met — a truly remarkable feat given the amount of uncomfortable parent-teacher conferences Iruka had to endure every year. Genius as he was, he still hadn’t figured out how not to sound like he was covering up some ulterior motive. Or perhaps he didn’t care. “Not at all, actually.”

“Ah.” The jonin gave him a once-over with a thoughtful hum. “Perhaps I misjudged you if your idea of a good time is getting that dirty.”

“No,” Iruka bit out, feeling his hands clench into his upper thighs until his fingers started to ache. Kakashi didn’t get to go back to pretending like Iruka was an easy mark to rile up with flirtatious innuendo. “You don’t get to say things like that to me anymore.”

To his credit, Kakashi had enough self-awareness to look abashed, or something that resembled it, beneath a mask that partially obscured his wan demeanour. For a moment it reminded Iruka that the man before him had already been saddled with many of the burdens that came with leading an entire shinobi village. Perhaps their interactions were a thread of his old life to which he sought to cling before everything unravelled. But Iruka was done letting his empathy come at the expense of his self-respect. 

“My apologies. I came here looking for your assistance, and instead I’ve said something foolish.”

“_My_ assistance?” Barely a week had passed since the man had helped Iruka embarrass himself in public. Surely the universe should’ve given him more time before he had to interact with the source of his humiliation again. “What more assistance from me do you need? I’m sure you made a nice profit off of Genma’s little office pool as it is.”

Iruka refused to feel guilt at the barb, or at the distressed furrow it caused in Kakashi’s brow. The other man sighed. “I deserved that, I suppose.”

In truth, Genma had come to Iruka earlier that week to tell him about the wager a group of jonin had going over the timing of the ill-fated confession. He had offered Iruka a year’s worth of dinners and drinks on his tab as an apology, likely because he hadn’t expected the confession to end in a flat-out rejection. Iruka knew Kakashi hadn’t been involved, but he was still human and couldn’t resist twisting the knife sometimes.

“You did,” Iruka agreed. All the fight went out of him then, as if those two words had unwound the bitterness that had knotted up for a week in some recess of his chest. It came undone with all the ease and grace of a mat slipping under his feet. Perhaps he had expected himself to be angrier, or for Kakashi to put up more of a struggle. 

All at once, it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Kakashi was still Kakashi, and a part of Iruka’s heart would still relent whenever he pulled on it.

“What can I do for you, Kakashi-san?” He stood and offered his desk chair to the man who would soon be Hokage, but Kakashi motioned for him to remain seated as he stepped into the classroom, hands still in his pockets. The garish orange cover of his usual reading material was nowhere in sight. 

“I come bearing the Godaime’s last decree, actually. Well, the last one before she declares me in charge, I suppose.” Kakashi lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Congratulations, you’re getting promoted to assistant principal.”

That certainly wasn’t the discussion he expected. “I’m..._what_?”

“No more muddy school days!” The jonin’s eyes arched shut with a grin.

“Why?” Iruka had never seriously considered the logistics of becoming a missing-nin, but if this promotion was some sort of consolation for getting romantically rebuffed, he might start looking into restarting his life in Takigakure. “What’s the catch?”

Kakashi made an inscrutable hum. “Have you considered that perhaps you earned it on your own merit?”

“From the Hokage herself?” Iruka couldn’t quell his bark of laughter. “What are you playing at, here?”

“Well,” the jonin said. “You see, the Academy’s workload is quite a lot for a teacher.”

“Uh huh.”

“And the Rokudaime—”

“Which is you.”

“Yes. Me,” Kakashi conceded. “I will have need of an operational advisor. I have been told I have issues with organization and prioritizing.”

It was clear to Iruka now that this was not a case of Kakashi bring deliberately cryptic as part of his “underneath the underneath” bullshit. Resting his chin in one hand, the teacher grinned in realization that Kakashi was genuinely out of his comfort zone here. For once, they were on equal footing in a conversation. 

“Tsunade wants someone to yell at you so you’ll show up to meetings on time, is that it?”

“No,” the silver-haired man muttered, then paused to run a hand over his face. “Maybe. Look, I’m not playing at anything. Whatever else you believe, I want you to know that you’ve been the one who’s held my feet to the fire when no one else would. And there isn’t anyone else in this village I’d trust more than you to tell me when I’m not doing the right thing, even if I’m doing something procedurally ‘correct.’ That makes you one of the most powerful people in the village, Iruka-sensei.”

But what did Iruka need with power? And what person in their right mind gave that much responsibility to a chuunin schoolteacher? What was he supposed to say the first time he stood in front of the Council of Elders and they asked for his bona fides? That he was the one who’d given love and care to the Nine Tails’ jinchuriki? The very love and care that the village had failed to provide. And what was he supposed to do the first time Kakashi went against their will on Iruka’s council?

“Surely there is someone more qualified for this. You don’t have to offer this to me because you feel sorry.”

“Iruka. Look around you.” Kakashi motioned to the classroom and then to the teacher himself with a sweeping gesture. “This request comes on the recommendation of the Godaime and the Rokudaime. If there were someone more qualified, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all, and especially not in a schoolhouse, of all places.”

“Of course not,” Iruka snapped. “Heaven forbid you have a little humility.” 

“That’s not—” Hands twisted into silver hair, Kakashi let out a frustrated groan. “Iruka, that isn’t what I meant. Not everything has to be an attack on you. All I meant was that I’m meeting you where you are. Despite what you think, I do care about your opinion. I care about you.” 

At some point Iruka had stood up, though he didn’t recall when. From opposite sides of the desk they stared each other down, faces so close that he could see flecks of bronze in Kakashi’s steel grey eyes. Those final words would always be Kakashi’s sure advantage — the thousand cuts that could weaken Iruka’s resolve more quickly than an earth jutsu, more precisely than a shuriken throw. More than anything, Iruka wanted nothing to do with this request because it meant he could no longer maintain distance between himself and the spurned longing that could not be buried beneath his work or numbed away with alcohol or forgotten in pursuit of the affections of another. He would always be at the mercy of those words, just as he was now.

He dropped back into his chair and pressed the heel of a palm to his temple. “When would you have need of this advisor?”

“Ah,” Kakashi said, pushing both hands quickly back into his pockets. “As soon as Yamato is back on active duty.”

“Are you—” Iruka sputtered. “You want to put him _back_ on active duty?”

The jonin shrugged. “Did you think he’d retire to be your homebody boyfriend?”

Spikes of anger crawled along the back of his neck like pricks from a senbon, creeping further upwards until his face was so heated that the scar on his nose burned. “He was just repatriated from being a _prisoner of war_ six weeks ago.” 

“He’s a soldier, sensei. He understands duty.”

“And _your_ duty as Hokage,” Iruka jerked a finger into his chest brazenly, “is to your people. How can you think he’s fit to serve right now?”

“He’s as fit for duty as he wants to be.”

“I thought you said you cared about my opinion?” the chuunin said petulantly.

Head cocked to the side, Kakashi regarded him with flat, half-lidded eyes. Though his posture hadn’t shifted from its casual slouch, the air between them had grown rigid as he painstakingly calculated his next words. “You are speaking as a lover right now, not as an advisor. And if you are trying to convince me that your feelings have compromised your impartiality, then you’re certainly succeeding.”

Instinct had long ago alerted him to the line he was crossing, but Iruka had breached the remote territory of his ire, untethered from the weight of his better judgement. His mind was all yellow flowers. Warm tea. Laugher in cold mud. Shared chakra and kisses in a niche of verdant flora.

“He’s a person, too. He has a whole kekkei genkai that he can’t even—” Surely Kakashi knew, didn’t he? Had Iruka woken from the Infinite Tsukuyomi into an alternate universe where they forced shinobi back into duty against medical advice, even when they were no longer in wartime? “He should make his own decisions.”

”Then let me make them.”

Both heads jerked in the direction of the doorway, though Iruka felt like the only one surprised to see Yamato there, clad in a fresh uniform with only the short strands of brown hair clinging wetly to his face to give any indication that he’d been involved in Iruka’s muddy adventure. Almond eyes were as blank as the rest of his features. His gaze did not linger long enough for Iruka to read.

“Senpai,” he said to Kakashi with a tone just as unreadable, “perhaps we should give Iruka-sensei an opportunity to get cleaned up. It seems like we have something to discuss.”

Being spoken about while he was still in the room was as miserable an experience for Iruka as it had likely been for Yamato moments ago.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed the fluff. Brace yourselves for the train wreck.
> 
> Full disclosure that I had to retcon a little bit here because the timeline in Shippuden 479 is so compressed that it’s hard for me to keep straight or even identify when Yamato might have been repatriated. In my headcanon it’s been about 10 weeks since the end of the war, and about eight since Yamato got to “go home” aka back to his apartment. Konoha didn’t suffer much physical damage from the war in comparison to its casualties, and Kakashi became Hokage almost as a matter of course, but they must have spent more than a few weeks restructuring and recovering.

It figured that the face of Tenzo’s fate would be feline. Curled strokes of red and streaks of green like claw marks surrounding the empty eyes of the only consistency Tenzo had ever known in his life. He ran a thumb over the red curve around the right eye. ANBU masks were vacant of any expression, serving only as a conduit for the will of the village, save for vague hints of emotion found in the changing of perspective. Sometimes incremental shifts uncovered degrees of truth that even a vacant mask could not conceal.

Giving the masks hints of identity in their animal personas was a curious thing. Cats were solitary hunters, creatures of habit that shirked control and sought no counsel. Hardly descriptive of the man who would soon be keeping the Hokage from harm and dispensing his justice. It felt like he’d been Cat for as long as he’d been Tenzo — those identities inextricably linked to his relationship with the silver-haired shinobi. 

Being Cat meant not being Yamato, but even Yamato had been created to be Kakashi’s replacement. To guide the team Kakashi had been assigned. To monitor the jinchuriki who had become Kakashi’s student.

To court the love interest Kakashi had spurned.

Tenzo tucked the mask into his flak vest and peered down from his perch on the highest branch of a great maple into Iruka’s wooded alcove behind the Academy — impossible to miss now that it was overrun with the crocuses leftover from their past encounter. Maybe he was being a little unfair to Iruka, who had never been anything but candid in his desire to be with Tenzo in a physical sense. The attraction was certainly mutual, and Tenzo was not so dim that he was unaware their relationship had been founded on Iruka’s need to redirect the hurt of rejection. Hearts were stubborn and fickle that way, vulnerable to so many emotions that were not so easily discarded once they took root.

Iruka’s struggle was familiar. One could hardly fault him for getting caught up in the orbit of a man who tilted the axis of every person’s world he touched. Tenzo’s had been tilting since age ten, and apparently it wasn’t about to stop.

Three days had passed since Kakashi’s visit to Iruka’s classroom. Three days since Kakashi had left the cat mask in Tenzo’s closet atop a folded stack of uniform blues. Three mornings he’d spent taking the detour past Iruka’s apartment on his long runs just to get a glimpse of the yellow crocus perched in its blue tin on the windowsill. Three afternoons shrouded in golden and orange leaves, as he was now, watching the chuunin pick through his lunch with troubled longing.

Three days and still no mokuton. But Kakashi still wanted him, and when the Hokage—_future_ Hokage—called, how could anyone refuse?

Tenzo swung down from his branch, landing in a dusting of earth and leaves beside the schoolteacher, who was seated amongst a sunny sprawl of crocuses. The chill of fall should have wilted them, but Iruka had studiously infused each stem with a stroke of chakra to keep the petals firm and bright. There must have been over 100 of them. Iruka ducked his head with a blush when he noticed Tenzo surveying each bloom.

With a tentative smile, Iruka said, “Hi.”

Tenzo’s returning smile felt tight against his lips. “Hi.”

“Glad you finally decided to join me.” Iruka fumbled through his lunch pack, which Tenzo now noticed contained two bento boxes stacked neatly atop one another. The chuunin pressed the second box — with slices of beef laid across a bed of rice mixed with mushrooms and carrots and the water chestnuts that made Iruka wrinkle his nose even though Tenzo loved to eat them — into Tenzo’s grasp without meeting his eyes. “I was wondering when you would.”

Guilt sank heavily in Tenzo’s stomach. It baffled him why he should feel guilty at all for the three days he’d spent considering Kakashi’s proposition. It hadn’t been the first time he’d gone a few days without talking to Iruka. But whatever it was between them — this nameless thing that had planted familiar emotional roots — left him feeling obliged to reconcile the palpable tension.

It felt strange to be obligated to someone outside the context of duty.

He took a seat next to Iruka on the fallen branch, next to the single saffron-scented reminder of the part of him that was still missing, and took a few bites of the meal. Even if Tenzo hadn’t known Iruka’s frugal tendencies not to buy store-made meals every day on a teacher’s salary, the taste told the story of an evening spent cooking at home. “Thank you for the food,” he said.

“I’m sorry about the other day.” Iruka’s eyes were still stubbornly focused on his lunch of eggs and soba. “I have a tendency to go overboard sometimes.” He cleared his throat. “With some people.”

Tenzo regarded the meal in his lap with a thought for the family Iruka said he’d lost. Maybe it wasn’t so strange to work hard to keep important people close when you had so few of them.

“Don’t be sorry,” Tenzo said. “You shouldn’t be sorry for caring.”

Even from the side, the flush in Iruka’s cheeks was evident. “You were right, though. You should make your own decisions. I didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t. Or that you weren’t still a capable shinobi.”

A hint of a smirk pulled at the corner of Tenzo’s mouth. “The rehab seems to be progressing well.” Reaching out to stroke a thumb along the side of Iruka’s face, he left a streak of chakra tinged with mud. “They’ll probably ease me back into rotation with a B-rank, but after that I imagine things should adjust fairly quickly.”

Iruka turned his gaze on him then, eyes full of disbelief. “You’re really going back, then?”

Next week would be his eighth week on decompression leave. He’d spent less time recuperating from near-mortal wounds. “Looks that way.”

“You say that like you don’t have a choice.” Shy fingers walked the length of Tenzo’s arm until they slipped into his palm, linking their hands together. Tenzo gave them a gentle squeeze. 

“Do I?”

“He isn’t Hokage yet,” Iruka muttered.

_It would be easier if he were_, Tenzo thought. The direct orders of the Hokage didn’t require consideration; merely obedience. But a request, especially one from a friend and mentor and... whatever else Kakashi was — it was a double-edged sword where both acquiescence and denial came at Tenzo’s own peril.

“Did _you_ say no to him? Would you?” A mental apology accompanied the words before they left his mouth — regret for the hint of accusation in his tone despite the fact that he knew Iruka wasn’t to be blamed for his feelings.

Nearly as quickly as they’d come, Iruka’s fingers yanked away. “That’s different. He’s not asking me to risk my safety. Or my health.”

“He’s asking me to do what I’m most fit to do. Just as he’s asking the same of you.”

“We’re not fighting a war anymore!” Iruka snapped, brown eyes sharp and full of righteous anger as they met Tenzo’s. “We’re still people.” He spoke the latter word with a press of his palm to Tenzo’s heart. “We’re still allowed to forge our own paths.”

Automatic reflex forced Tenzo to lean away, even though his mind protested at the loss of contact between them. “What other path do you think I have?” he asked, thinking of his dream in the Infinite Tsukuyomi, the warm world of illusion where he could have a permanent place with Team 7. “One where I stay in the village and play teacher? Become a jonin sensei like Kakashi did?”

“It’s not playing! Your life isn’t a game. I just—” Food set aside now, Iruka ran two frustrated hands over his face, pressing his palms into his eyes to stave off the angry tears betrayed by the tremour in his voice. Quieter now than the rustle of the breeze through the cedars, he said, “Someone else shouldn’t be forcing your hand on your own choices.”

“Iruka.” If only if were that easy. If only there was a choice to be made. But the outcome had always been an inevitable one. Tenzo was simply biding his time in delusion if he ever believed Konoha would allow him to be something other than the weapon he was created to be. “I enjoy spending time with you, but I wasn’t going to be on leave forever.”

“Your mokuton,” Iruka said, like Tenzo didn’t think about his fucking shortcomings every blasted minute of the day. “Shouldn’t you be allowed a little more time to...?” Shoulders slumped with resigned exhaustion, the chuunin turned his face away.

“To what?” Tenzo prompted. “I’m not a project to be fixed. I can’t keep staring at a blue sky every day hoping I’ll wake up the next morning to a different colour.” There were plenty of shinobi, jonin and ANBU, who had no kekkei genkai and still had fine service records. Most did not, and in fact, shinobi like Yugao were quite skilled in kenjutstu, or Gai with taijutsu. Having no mokuton did not mean he couldn’t serve well.

Kakashi understood this. Having his senpai— the _Hokage_ — in his corner would likely prevent the village from taking more drastic measures to regain use of one of its most valuable assets. Spare his mind from the tamperings of the Yamanakas and Ibiki.

At least, that was his hope. There was always a chance that even Kakashi’s influence would eventually be insufficient. Even with Iruka acting as his council to back him up. Maybe Iruka already knew that. Someone as close to Sandaime as he’d been couldn’t be ignorant of the village’s most sinister blemishes.

Caution set aside, he reached into his flak jacket and pulled out the mask that had been his constant companion for decades. Sunlight cast a gleam of yellow, reflected from the crocuses nearby, across its hollow eyes. Immediate recognition provoked a small gasp from Iruka.

“This is who I am,” Tenzo said softly. ”When the Hokage calls, I answer.”

The chuunin’s fingers hesitantly traced a stroke of red, then traveled further to run his thumb over a pointed ear. “Yamato.”

“Yamato is a codename. It’s a name the Godaime gave me.”

The mental pieces were starting to fit together as Iruka’s face softened in understanding. “Do you have another?”

The name was on the tip of his tongue, aching to be shared. Tenzo was the only name he’d ever taken for himself. It would be so easy to give it to Iruka now, but he’d given so much already, and at what cost? “We’re both going to be working for Kakashi-senpai soon. Is that something I can give you? Knowing how you feel for him?”

From the crease in his brow, it was clear Iruka realized they were speaking of more than just a name. The chuunin worried his lip between his teeth as his downcast eyes stared unfocused into the gaze of the porcelain cat, searching deeply for an answer that was too far out of reach. With time, perhaps Iruka would find it. But time was a luxury they no longer had.

For the first time in years, Tenzo childishly wished things didn’t have to be this way.

He leaned into his companion’s space until the proximity shocked Iruka back into attentiveness. The press of their lips was soft and long and chaste, Tenzo breathing the scent of him with a slow inhale in hopes that he could commit it to memory.

Bento box set aside, he said, “See you at the inauguration, Iruka-sensei,” and then body flickered from the wooded alcove, leaving nothing but the bobbing of yellow flowers in the wake of his presence.

* * *

The armor still fit, though the forearm guards took two rounds of adjusting before they stopped dipping sideways every time he brought his short sword forward in a downswing. The sleeveless black suit beneath his chest plate settled like a familiar cast around his torso, smelling of ash like they’d pulled the uniform straight out of the remains of his locker after Pain had blasted the village. The intricate curves of the tattoo on his left shoulder had faded with time, but Kakashi would seal it again soon with his own chakra.

When the Godaime had seen him in full gear at his first report-in, she’d put a hole straight through her desk. She waived off Shizune’s frantic scolding with a tired scowl as she shook the splinters from her hand. Though they weren’t related, Tsunade was the only person whose DNA shared some resemblance to Tenzo’s. Which made angering her feel like what he supposed was the equivalent of disappointing a favorite aunt — if one were to have an aunt that could punch nephews through walls.

“Leave it,” Tsunade snapped at one of the chuunin that had been sent in to clean up the mess. “I’m sure _Cat_ here can fix it, since he’s so fit for duty.” Her words were punctuated by the clatter of the medical discharge scroll he’d handed her — one she tossed aside now with a scoff. It had been signed with an unforgeable chakra seal by the medical division’s chief ANBU liaison, as well as by his own therapist, who had begrudgingly agreed that Tenzo had completed enough rehab to begin a limited rotation for the next six weeks — with a prohibition against S-ranked missions. And with the caveat that he complete an occupational health check-in after the end of every assignment.

The Hokage’s office in the reconstructed tower was not as large as its original iteration — beige walls surrounding bookshelves stacked with unread scrolls and paperwork strewn about in stacks, shoved in corners and against walls in some bizarre system of organization. Tsunade’s presence was known to take up the whole room, but today the air inside was thick with bitter tension between her and the man who would be her replacement. Everything had gone through appropriate channels, and Tenzo hadn’t been discharged from care against medical advice, so he could only gather that Tsunade’s ire was directed at the room’s other occupant, who was slouched against the far wall, observing Tenzo with an impassive stare beneath the hitai-ate that barely held the flagging silver strands away from his face.

This was a man who’d willingly chosen to subject himself to Iruka’s irate outbursts for the duration of his tenure, so it was hardly a surprise that the Godaime’s anger did little to phase him. Whatever quarrel they had was clearly about Tenzo, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. Kakashi hadn’t mentioned it at last night’s sparring session, which meant it wasn’t in his purview to know. The static and noise of his thoughts had narrowed down to the singular precedence of his mission, the way his mind always did when he reported for duty. Observing Shizune as she attempted to play mediator between the once and future Hokages, he spared one pitying thought for Iruka, then shook it from his head.

“I am here to serve,” Tenzo said. “What is my mission, Hokage-sama?”

“Be quiet, Cat,” Tsunade snapped, then added, with amber eyes narrowed at Kakashi so intensely they could’ve pierced skin, “before I decide this isn’t my circus anymore.”

* * *

The mission came down later that day: a find-and-retrieval of the Water Daimyo’s niece, Asuka, a kunoichi herself who’d been with the third division and had fallen somewhere outside the borders of Yugakure. Her body had yet to be recovered, alive or dead. It was Tsunade’s idea of a compromise, he supposed. Hardly an ANBU-level mission, but risky enough to serve as a litmus test for his readiness to resume duty.

In a time before the Fourth War, Tenzo might have wondered why the village was wasting precious manpower on someone else’s diplomats, especially in the midst of a war-rebuilding effort. But they were all allies now, and Kiri had money that Konoha, the village bearing the brunt of the financial burden, needed for resources. It certainly paid more ryo than expected for a B-rank. Tenzo was to complete it as a jonin, accompanied by Raido and Kakashi himself as a sign of goodwill and diplomacy. In truth, it was probably Kakashi’s last hurrah (in a matter of speaking) on active duty before assuming a life of politics, as well as an opportunity for Tenzo to familiarize himself with the commander of the Hokage’s guard platoon.

They were to depart at dawn to meet their contact from Kiri. The anticipation set into his nerves like an old familiar ache. Before he’d been— _Before_, Tenzo would make himself a pot of tea and pull away the sheets tightly tucked around his mattress precisely six hours before departure, but his body refused to fall back into the old pre-mission routine so easily. Dreams of earth packed around him like a coffin, vines and roots twisting through his veins, bleeding thick syrup sap, kept him from sleep unless his body crashed into it.

And the black tea smell, the warmth of ceramic between his palms, reminded him too much of hearty laughter, of bantering over myths in the _Kojiki_.

He laid his armor and weapons aside on the low table, but he hadn’t yet stripped off the sleeveless black garb beneath. Hunched over the yellow-white laminate counter in his kitchen, Tenzo stared blankly at the drip drip of the faucet until his senses buzzed with the presence of Kakashi in his apartment — a dark and drawn figure bathed in the pallid overhead lights and dressed only on in his standard issue blues. The silver-haired shinobi had slipped in through the side window, or maybe the sliding door to his balcony, past traps that Tenzo never bothered to activate, because any ill-intentioned stranger stupid enough to break into the ANBU barracks got what they deserved.

“Another briefing, senpai?” Tenzo asked without looking up. Or perhaps Kakashi had come seeking a last-minute spar.

“They’re going to set the date for my inauguration.”

It was a wonder the council had let Kakashi delay this long. Maybe Tenzo should’ve felt pride or embarrassment or some kind of emotion about being the hang up, but he couldn’t muster a thing, not even annoyance at bearing responsibility for Kakashi’s decision. It was just another burden added and labeled neatly in the mental catalog of Tenzo’s duty.

He looked to Kakashi with a shrug. It was a handful of days’ journey to Yugakure, but the amount of time it would take to locate the target was anyone’s guess. Tenzo had no doubt the village would recall Kakashi if the search took too long, but whether he’d return without Tenzo was another thing entirely. “Is this your way of telling me to make it a short trip?”

Kakashi’s head was inclined to one side, contemplating the cat mask set aside on the counter next to Tenzo. His silence was the only affirmation necessary, and now Tenzo was starting to get annoyed at all the stupid mixed signals he was getting.

Maybe he had always been a little angry. Tenzo’s temper was a tightly sealed chamber where he pushed down every frustration until it fused into a hot stone of rage settled in his gut. He whirled on Kakashi, pushing in on his personal space in some twisted mockery of the way Kakashi had pushed into his.

“What do you _want_?” Tenzo demanded.

Did he think Tenzo was blind, that he couldn’t see the lines being laid? The way Kakashi flirted with Iruka every time he pushed the schoolteacher’s buttons. And this— whatever it was between Kakashi and Tenzo that could never be defined because of some stubborn insistence that shinobi didn’t get to be normal.

Kakashi weaved the sign of the hare, and suddenly the swirl of ink on Tenzo’s left shoulder ignited in pain, shooting down his arm like a lightning strike. Tenzo’s mouth opened soundlessly in a paralyzed gasp. The gloveless fingers of one of Kakashi’s hands touched the inflamed mark with hesitance, a question lingering in his steel eyes as they locked with Tenzo’s. His fingertips were tinged with electricity that popped between their bare skin.

“I know you think I’m being cruel, or maybe that I don’t understand your feelings, but I do.” His face softened behind the mask. “The war has taken enough from you already. From a lot of us.”

Tenzo gaped, a retort lodged in his throat that he couldn’t jar loose.

“I can’t be what you need. There’s no normal as Hokage.” Kakashi snorted. “I thought giving you the chance to go back to ANBU was the way to give you some normalcy, but I can deactivate the mark. If that’s what you want.”

ANBU tattoos were infused with the chakra of each Hokage, both as a symbol of loyalty and as a tracking mechanism. Once applied, they could never be removed, but if their bodies weren’t burned before death while in the field, all retired agents had their tattoos deactivated to prevent tampering or compromise from enemies. Having it deactivated had crossed Tenzo’s mind only once, when Kabuto had been sifting through his mind for enough compromising intelligence to destroy a nation. Even in his last moments of consciousness beneath that boneyard, he’d thought maybe someone would find him, feared being used as bait for a trap.

“I’ll make sure it’s an honourable discharge, Tenzo,” Kakashi said quietly, his face close enough now that even a murmur could be heard. A cool thumb traced electric strokes over the corded muscle along Tenzo’s arm. “You can return to duty as a jonin. Work with Team 7 if you want. Stay with Iruka-sensei. But you won’t be allowed to come back to ANBU.”

Tenzo squeezed his eyes shut tightly, mind full of the possibilities, the scenarios at the end of each divergent path his life could’ve taken. Paths full of tea and flowers. A home full of pictures and shelves full of carvings and a floor with books scattered across. A team to lead, that looked up to him with eagerness to soak in his wisdom. But how could he choose another path if it meant abandoning the man who’d saved him from Root? Who’d risked everything for someone who’d tried to kill him, and had still shown compassion. Guidance. Friendship.

“You’ve already asked me to choose once,” Tenzo said. “Don’t make me do it again.”

* * *

It took six days after they entered the Land of Hot Water to find Asuka. Her body had subsumed deep into the earth beneath a copse of pines Tenzo had scouted fourteen kilometres west of the site where Kakashi’s division had battled the seven swordsman. To an untrained eye, the growth looked old and undisturbed, but Tenzo found the hum of the chakra in the trees peculiarly young for their appearance.

Kakashi and Raido and the jonin from Kiri, Muto, had spread out in a fifteen kilometer radius of the battle site. Only Raido was in range to be summoned via radio. Tenzo’s hands weaved the wood clone summon before the spike of pain between his eyes reminded him he couldn’t do that anymore. Instead he sent a shadow clone, hoping the distance to his comrades was not too far for his chakra to maintain it.

Hands pressed to earth, he could feel it now — how the soil had been turned. A whisper beckoned him from somewhere far below, like a familiar faint whine that grew louder when he split the ground with an earth jutsu. That’s when he found her, blue lips and pale skin sunken into the shriveled form of a woman whose body was too thin for her armor, as though muscles and tissue had been fed upon by the encasement of white mutated flesh around her lower half. She was coiled between unnaturally grown roots. The very trees themselves were feeding off of her.

Air still passed through her lips, audible enough below the high-pitched whine when he advanced close enough to push the dirt-smeared hitai-ate, bearing the finely carved strokes of the allied forces emblem, away from her face.

“Alive,” he croaked into the static crackle of his headset. “Target is alive.”

The whine grew louder then, jarring some memory loose in Tenzo’s brain of an earthen coffin. Of white flesh moulded to his own, that had fed off his chakra to sustain an army of thousands. Asuka’s eyes peeled open to reveal something inhuman and amber, and Tenzo sensed her shifting in time to roll away from the white mass of her arm that shot towards his head.

Again his hands formed the seals before his mind could keep pace. Snake. Boar. Ram. Snake.

_Make a fucking tree_. And that was the last thought he had before the pain seized his brain and pulled him into darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

The morning fog hung like a damp shroud over the water, curling in a swirled dance across the deck boards of the ship that bore Kakashi passage back to the Fire Country. With mist this thick, it was hard to glean a sense of time. But Kakashi had been on deck since dawn, and the pangs of hunger were signalling the hours he’d lost staring out into the grey horizon, waiting for the borders of home to settle into view. At least two more hours at sea, unless the winds moved more in their favour.

Returning Asuka to her uncle in the Water Country was the obligation Kakashi had prepared for. A personal imperative, performed as any good war-veteran-turned-politician would, regardless of the state in which her body had been found. At its core, the task was scarcely different from other missions. And recovering bodies was hardly an unusual task, especially not for Kakashi, a man whose most formative memory had been the discovery of his own father’s body. 

The bodies of enemies? He retrieved them often. Missing-nin? Too frequently. Comrades lost to the front lines of battle, especially those like Asuka, who were under his command? More commonly than he wished.

But dispatching the Zetsu and explaining to another nation’s sovereign why a previously eradicated threat had consumed half her body? That had, admittedly, been one of the few possibilities he _hadn’t_ calculated. Though perhaps he should have. Despite being too raw from Obito’s crusade. Too overcome by the sheer brightness of Naruto’s steadfast ideology that love could conquer all. Brightness the boy had no doubt gotten from Iruka.

Had it been too much to hope they could fully move on from the threats that had ensnared an entire world in war? It was hard to say. A single straggler from the White Zetsu Army could be labeled neither threat nor anomaly. It was simply a data point in need of a trend for comparison. A trend Kakashi — soon to lead a nation — could not avoid seeking, even as he dreaded the burden it would entail.

Leaning against the rail, he watched the bow split the black waves as an ocean of possible outcomes spread out before him. Already he was calculating the implications of this on the village. On the unified shinobi world. On Tenzo, who undoubtedly would be most qualified to work with Naruto and lead the charge on any attempt to seek out more dregs buried beneath the earth. If any others still remained.

Except Tenzo was incapacitated — the one body Kakashi hadn’t prepared to retrieve.

No. He hadn’t _allowed_ himself to prepare. Because shinobi went through the highs and lows of struggling with chakra stabilization all the time as a natural part of field duty and combat recovery. Kakashi had lost his (borrowed) sharingan, after all, yet he still did his duty. It was an insult to Tenzo to think he couldn’t do the same after the loss of his own kekkei genkai.

The chances that Tenzo would’ve had such a damaging reaction from a condition that the medi-nins couldn’t fully identify... That the psych-nins called a mental block... They were so low as to not risk further impeding Tenzo’s rehab by quarantining him in the village, forcing him to stew in his own anxiety until he internalized some absurd notion that he was no longer useful to the village.

And yet outcomes oftentimes defied the odds. Raido had taken Tenzo’s unconscious form on ahead to Konoha after they’d discovered him prone near the split in the earth where they’d found Asuka. A tendril from the Zetsu that had consumed her had leeched onto Tenzo’s shoulder, though it had occurred recently enough that Kakashi had thankfully been able to tear it free with little damage. The same couldn’t be said for Asuka, who lost what little life she’d been clinging to once their recovery team had peeled her free and electrocuted the remains of the Zetsu.

The leather binding of the scroll he held scratched roughly against his skin as he thumbed it. Kakashi tapped the scroll idly, then turned to lean his back against the rail as he pulled the binding free and unfurled it. The Mizukage, Terumi Mei, had left the scroll in his possession after their debriefing with the Water Daimyo. It had been one of the few things left intact on Asuka’s body. Kakashi traced the thick black markings etched across the parchment, the intricate characters that spiralled in an unfamiliar array. The Kirigakure shinobi called it a water sealing scroll, designed to prevent chakra depletion and distributed to their troops early on in the war, when they’d discovered how strongly the Zetsu thrived on human life force.

“_Water chakra was especially potent to the Zetsu we encountered_,” Mei had told him as she pressed the scroll into his grasp. “_They fed off it. The one who found Asuka must be a water affinity, to have been affected so. Perhaps he can gain more use from this than she could_.”

He was not about to tell another village’s Kage about Konoha’s secret wood release user, or how that user had been exploited to cause the very damage the scroll in question had been designed to mitigate. This, too, was the burden of a Hokage — to carry the weight of decades of choices made outside his control while no longer having the luxury of time to stew in guilt over any of them.

Or over his own choices. No more freedom for selfish regret. To wish he had not leaned on Tenzo so hard, knowing he was too loyal to deny Kakashi a sincere request. Because if Tenzo hadn’t come back to active duty... if he hadn’t discovered the Zetsu that had consumed Asuka, there was no telling how long the world would have gone unbeknownst to this potential threat.

Beneath his mask, Kakashi twisted his lips in wry amusement as he rolled the scroll and re-fastened its binding. His intention had been to give Tenzo a purpose again. To put him in a better place to recover. Well, he’d found that purpose all right — and it put Tenzo right back into the danger that had caused his affliction in the first place.

* * *

The ship arrived a quarter hour after noon, pulling into harbour just as the sun peeked its rays from the curtain of fog. Kakashi had sent a messenger bird ahead to Tsunade bearing an encrypted report of his findings and an estimated time of arrival, which meant it was not so surprising to see a figure clad in a familiar green and navy uniform milling about the groups of fishermen who were pulling the morning’s catch into port. It was going to take time for Kakashi to adjust to the need for escorts to join him in making trips so commonplace that he could complete them from rote memory.

After an exchange of thanks and coin with the captain, Kakashi vaulted over the rail, landing in a smooth glide of silver hair and sleek reflexes that elicited a fascinated murmur from a few deckhands scattered about. The escort? Not so much. Closer in proximity now, Kakashi thought his fellow shinobi to be exquisitely plain in the most attractive way, chestnut hair gathered at the top of his head, bronze skin casting him in stark contrast to the ashen pale fog. The escort stood at the far end of the dock, arms akimbo in a familiar but displeased stance, complimented by a scowl that radiated an unexpected amount of killing intent, and a horizontal scar across the nose that—

Ah, well that explained the killing intent, then.

“Iruka-sensei,” Kakashi called, his voice a cheerful but cautious lilt, the way it always was when Sakura caught him sneaking out of the hospital before discharge, or when Naruto came close to chucking his Icha Icha novels into the river. “Tsunade-sama has you chasing after me already, does she?”

Years of watching Iruka interact with Naruto had Kakashi steadying his stance, waiting for the barrage of an ear-splitting tirade. The scar glowed with the sort of rosy indignation that made him itch with desire to provoke, even knowing the consequences. But Iruka merely cocked his head and said, “You’re not Hokage yet.”

This was a fact some seemed to take great pleasure in reminding him of, Iruka and Tsunade especially. “Last I checked,” Kakashi confirmed.

And at least he was braced for the punch he received, even if he hadn’t been certain it would come. Iruka’s knuckles were white hot below his eye socket, digging in with enough force to bruise, though they didn’t fracture the bone. The blow left his ears ringing, blood seeping into the mask as it trickled from his nose.

“Then I can still do that,” Iruka muttered, stuffing the offending fist into his flak jacket pocket to conceal how his fingers flexed in pain.

Several of the deckhands in the harbour went still in silent observation, contemplating the level of concern necessary for what had to be a common occurrence, especially between shinobi in these parts. Kakashi cocked his head to the side in a show of acquiescence. “I suppose you can.”

“And I’ll do it again!” Iruka’s face was flushed from cheeks to ears. “You arrogant, imbecilic, obstinate, degenerate, pitiless excuse of a man.”

“Did you rehearse that on the way over?” Kakashi wondered.

“Fucking—” Iruka jammed both fists in his pockets now, trying to steady the body that shook in anger. “I can’t believe I—”

Seeing the opening for what it was, Kakashi risked a maiming by whatever weapons Iruka might be stashing in his vest in order to guide the teacher away by the elbow before they drew more unnecessary attention. Perhaps realizing they had completed the extent of any exchange that could be had in public, Iruka yanked his arm from Kakashi’s grip and continued to follow at a reluctant distance.

They traveled in silence, with only the thickness of tension between them and the harsh crunch of the dirt road beneath Iruka’s heavy footsteps. By the time the port was a point in the distance, the chuunin’s killing intent had simmered into acerbic spite. Once or twice, Kakashi dabbed at the blood from his nose, but he refused the yellow handkerchief Iruka handed him each time. A persistent question — the only question that mattered — nagged until it could no longer be ignored, but Kakashi couldn’t bring himself to ask.

Luckily the look on Iruka’s face was enough to confirm that at least Tenzo was still alive.

“Iruka—”

“I don’t _know_,” the chuunin snapped. “They won’t let me see him. The only reason I even know he’s in the village is because Kotetsu was at the gate when Raido brought him back.”

Kakashi wondered idly whether it was worth re-educating the shinobi who manned the gate about leaking classified information. It seemed a moot point considering the state of the jonin rumour mill these days. But it would have to get addressed, in any case. He wisely chose to bring it up with Iruka at a later date.

Even though Tenzo was technically still a jonin until his official ANBU reinstatement, the circumstances and the nature of his condition meant that Tsunade would have ordered him to be held on the third floor of the hospital, where the most critical injuries and covert operatives were treated. “I’ll make sure they let you in to see him.”

“How thoughtful of you.” The underlying tone of resentment belied the gratitude. It was the sort of bitter retort heard frequently from the nin who had been forced to put sentiment at odds with duty to the village. Spouses and partners who saw loved ones return home broken and bleeding, who bemoaned the cognitive dissonance needed to send a beloved into the arms of danger to protect their home. Iruka was too proper a shinobi to ever say the words that hung between them out loud — the same words Tsunade had spoken a few weeks prior (_“He’s done more than enough”_) — but Kakashi bristled at them all the same. 

Bristled at the thought of keeping Tenzo out of service. Bristled at taking away the only life Tenzo had ever known because of an affliction that made him no less an excellent shinobi. Tenzo had said he wanted to try something normal, but if that was what normal was — leaving active duty completely — how was it any better than the alternative?

Except the alternative had landed Tenzo in the hospital despite Kakashi’s best intentions.

The bridge that connected the port town to the vast forests outside Konoha spanned the width of the river like a stone specter, beckoning Kakashi to an uncertain future. Beside him, Iruka knelt before a jizo statue near one of the stone columns by the parapet. It was something so endearingly plain, the way the teacher’s lips formed silent prayers — maybe for students lost, or for safe passage, or for Tenzo himself. After the benediction, Iruka tugged the yellow handkerchief from his pocket and knotted it around the statue’s neck. Kakashi found charm in the futility and the sentimentality such a gesture, full of care for a stone carving that had spent years only bearing the dust of footsteps and the weight of traveler pleas.

It was easy to see why Tenzo had been so taken with Iruka. Elite shinobi would never leave behind an identifying item in such a frivolous manner, even on missions like this where the chances of being tracked were low. But there was something relentlessly captivating about someone as un-shinobi-like as this chuunin, who put so much care into the little aspects of life to ensure ninja did not lose their humanity. Whose brashness and disregard for station had put its hooks into some lost part of Kakashi’s spirit and pulled it to the surface each time they were together.

It was more difficult for Kakashi to name the value, the attraction he found in that. He wanted to keep it close the same way he wanted to keep Tenzo’s friendship and loyalty close, even though he could not give — didn’t know _how_ to give — either man the deeper connection they desired. The trajectory of Kakashi’s life, of becoming Hokage, was an abrupt adjustment, too. He was still learning. Still adapting. And, in many aspects, still failing. Because in pushing them away, he had pushed Tenzo and Iruka together instead. And that made keeping them close to Kakashi less an act of protectiveness and more an act of selfishness.

The ache of guilt set into his bones so deep already, and yet this one hurt on a level he couldn’t quantify. It seemed no matter what he did, he’d end up hurting someone. But if Naruto had taught him anything in his unrelenting idealism, it was to be fearless at opening his heart, even if it meant accepting the hurt with the good.

Even if it meant letting go of two people he had grown to care for so they could create something better together.

He shifted closer in Iruka’s direction, making space for the carriage that rumbled over the bridge in their direction, likely carrying a handful of refugees displaced from the war. Kakashi squatted next to him, leaning their heads together as he signed his own mudra to the statue. It was clear that Iruka made Tenzo a little brighter, a little less self-conscious of his flaws, a little more aware of the things that made him uniquely _Tenzo_. And so Kakashi pulled the scroll with his mission report from the back pocket of his vest and pushed it into the chuunin’s hands. Not simply because the man was to be his closest advisor and confidant for the foreseeable future, but also because he owed Iruka this much for giving Tenzo something Kakashi never could.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me,“ he said, voice low and heady, causing Iruka’s lips to part slightly as he felt the breath of every word. “But you deserve to know what happened, too. And the good he did, even if I— even if _it_ hurt him.”

Iruka’s head dipped in uncertainty, brown eyes searching Kakashi’s gaze for deeper meaning even as he gripped the scroll he’d been handed. He sat back on his heels as he unrolled it in his lap and began to read.

“There’s nothing to forgive.” Iruka’s voice was an unsteady tremor as he skimmed the words in each line. The sketch of the scene where Asuka had been found. The report of the White Zetsu remnant that Tenzo had uniquely been able to sense. “I shouldn’t have been trying to micromanage his recovery. I shouldn’t have been trying to keep him close as a substitute for—” Brown eyes screwed shut tightly as he swallowed back the rest of his regrets.

They were unified in their guilt on that front, it seemed. Tenzo’s fear that the elders in the village would try to recover the mokuton by force if it did not return naturally was genuine — something Kakashi had worked hard to prove unfounded, to demonstrate that Tenzo was just as competent without it. Of course Kakashi would be enlisting Naruto’s help to further analyze the Zetsu threat, but if the boy’s intervention was not enough... if the mokuton became necessary...

Reaching into his vest again, Kakashi pulled out the second scroll, Asuka’s scroll, with its peculiar sealing patterns that thrummed of water chakra. The sharingan had etched a fair number of water jutsu into his brain over the years, but none of them made him any less a lightning affinity. In the event that activating the scroll required a water affinity’s touch, it could only be the touch of one who valued Tenzo’s wellbeing as much as Kakashi.

“How much do you know about fuinjutsu?” he asked Iruka quietly. “I’ll need your support on this if we’re going to help him now.”

And to do that, they had to figure out what was wrong with him in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter. Ugh. All of Kakashi's chapters are bridge chapters where I write thousands of words of stream-of-consciousness and nothing happens. It makes my inner saboteur come out every time and fill me with anxiety about my writing.
> 
> Anyway thank you for all the wonderful comments! And thank you for staying along for the ride.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Much. Dialogue. *weeping*

“Absolutely not.”

Exhaustion had etched into lines on the Godaime’s face, though she would deny their existence if confronted. Arms folded across her chest, she planted herself in front of the hospital room door — an imposing barrier of blood and flesh and the strength of a legend, golden eyes flecked with a dare to challenge her. Strands of blonde slipped free of their confines as she shook her head at the two would-be visitors to Yamato’s bedside.

“Come _onnnnn_, Tsunade-baachan.” Naruto and Sakura were wearing twin expressions of anxious pleading, faces sullen beneath the fluorescent hospital lights and the overcast gloom from the window in the hallway, but it was Naruto who made the entreaty. “He’s our taicho. You have to let us see him.”

“They won’t let anyone in,” Sakura told her. “Not even me, and I work here. We’re worried, shisho.”

Tsunade’s face softened slightly in sympathy, and her lips parted to reply just as Iruka and Kakashi stepped into her view from their slow approach down the hall. When her gaze landed on them, her expression hardened immediately. “On my grandfather’s grave, if you don’t leave this man alone to rest, I will throw all of you off Hokage Rock and put Shizune in charge before they arrest me.”

“You can’t do that to Iruka-sensei!” Naruto chirped, then turned a mischievous eye on the silver-haired man next to him. “Kakashi-perv is fine to throw, though.”

“Naruto,” Iruka cut him off with a cautionary tone before the conversation could attract nosy onlookers. The tea tin that held the yellow crocus slipped slightly as he gripped it tighter. Tsunade’s eyes flicked to it only briefly.

“Iruka, do you have business here?” she asked.

Before he could take a step back, Kakashi laid a hand on his upper back, reassuring in its warmth even as it startled him. Iruka couldn’t remember a time where the jonin had felt comfortable enough to touch him if it wasn’t an absolute necessity, and yet their relationship had changed so much since the night Iruka had drunkenly spilled his feelings all over the man. The heat of the palm lingered long after it was gone.

Fishing the scroll from the Water Country from his flak jacket, Kakashi held it out for the Godaime’s view. “He’s the closest we’re going to come to unlocking a solution, so I’d say he has a lot of business here.”

Tsunade snatched the scroll with pursed lips and removed the binding, partially unrolling it to examine the markings. “Water sealing.”

“Yes, and it has to be activated by a water affinity.”

“I assume you’ve tested this theory?”

Kakashi bristled. “If I could activate it myself, don’t you think I would have?”

She didn’t deign him with a response. Instead she narrowed the weight of her focus, heavy as the impact of her fist, on Iruka while she re-rolled the scroll. “Come with me. The rest of you wait out here.”

“What? No!” Naruto squawked. “You can’t just leave us out here. If my senjutsu can help Yamato-taicho, I want to do it.”

“Or my healing ninjutsu,” Sakura added as she pulled her pink locks into a tight ponytail, face solemn with readiness to delve into a medical quandary.

Pride welled in the back of Iruka’s throat until it choked the initial wave of tears. These were the kids that had saved the world. The ones who had banded together to end a war, to redeem the irredeemable, to cling tenaciously to the hope that their wayward teammate could still be a friend and an ally. They had surpassed the power that many nations only dreamed of possessing, and here they were, demanding to use it yet again for good. To help the captain that had taught them so much while never truly being their teacher.

And yet, to Iruka they would always be the effervescent duo that squabbled across desks over the attention of a dark-haired boy. The top and the bottom of the class. If only his younger self could see them now.

“Fine, fine.” The headache Tsunade rubbed away was one Iruka knew all too well, had fought off countless times over the years as he learned which battles with Naruto were worth pursuing. “Just shut up and stop making a scene in my hospital.” And then she extended a manicured finger in Kakashi’s direction. “But don’t think you and I aren’t going to have an _extended_ debrief after this.”

The quiet sigh that escaped the mask might have been Iruka’s imagination, but the slight incline of Kakashi’s head toward the heavy oak hospital door, urging Iruka to face the looming dread behind it, was all too real.

* * *

In the antiseptic light through the gauze curtains of his hospital room, Yamato’s skin was an ashen pale like evening snow. Delicate and untouched, belying the gruesome lethality of an elite shinobi. _ANBU_. Iruka had to remind himself Yamato was ANBU. He’d seen the mask, but what lay beneath it now was sleek and placid. Defined lines of his jaw, the sharp downward slope of his nose, and lips that hung loose in sleep. Long lashes resting against his cheeks beneath wild brown fringe.

He could have been sleeping. Iruka could have seen him like this, unguarded and untroubled in the peaceful arms of rest, in a hundred different ways. Why did this one have to be the first?

Yamato lay still in the bed, covers pulled to his chest with arms left bare — arms free of injury, boasting only of corded muscle and the faint hint of old scars.

“Was he not injured?” Iruka asked. It had been seven days since they’d brought him in. Medical ninjitsu worked wonders sometimes, but to leave him that pristine in such a short amount of time?

“He has my—” Tsunade paused, her lips a firm line as she kept her gaze locked on her patient. “He has the mokuton. Somewhere in there, still. It heals remarkably well.”

Desperation to reach out and touch ached in Iruka’s bones, to the tips of his fingers that he kept curled tightly at his side. “So what’s keeping him here is psychological?”

“We thought so at first, but no.” She was speaking as much to Sakura now as she was to Iruka, and he blinked in sudden clarity, as though just now realizing there were other people in the room. “And then we thought his chakra pathways were misfiring, but that’s not quite right, either. It appears his body is consuming its own chakra to function.”

Emerald eyes peered into vacant thought as Sakura parsed this information. “Like an autoimmune response, but with chakra?”

“That’s a good theory, Sakura,” Tsunade said. “Unfortunately we’ve never seen a case like this before, so I don’t know what’s causing it. His kekkei genkai is rare, and it gives him an affinity for both earth and water. The earth chakra seems to be feeding off his water chakra.”

“What, like eating it?” Naruto asked, brows furrowed.

Without any clear answer, Tsunade could only shrug her shoulders with a heavy sigh.

“He was underground for weeks in the great tree,” Kakashi said. “The Zetsu probably fed off his water chakra so much that his body had to adapt to what it needed to do to survive.”

Some part of Iruka had always known how small his world was. How narrow the breadth of his knowledge and skills were in the scope of Konoha’s presence in the shinobi world. Surrounded by all these ninja who held more power and had seen more danger than he’d ever know, due to his station or his occupation or the limitations of his capabilities. They spoke to and spoke _around_ information he’d never have the opportunity to know, just as they were doing now, discussing experiences on the front lines and about the details of Yamato’s mokuton. Iruka had spent enough time around Sandaime to know that a rare kekkei genkai like that, previously thought to have been lost to history, didn’t just _reappear_.

He knew what Konoha was capable of doing, even if he was never told directly. Even if he had to push down the twin presence of insecurity about his competence and doubt in the country he loved. In the people he loved.

As his eyes roamed the length of Yamato’s unconscious form, his gaze lingered on the jonin’s long fingers, remembering how they had deftly formed the signs for an earth jutsu as part of the outdoor classroom demonstration. Iruka clutched the tea tin tighter, stared down into the shallow depth of bright yellow petals. He couldn’t shake the lesson from brain. Earth and water. The most basic foundations of life, meant to work in harmony — meant to create — twisted instead to damage and to kill.

To consume a part of Yamato’s life essence until he wilted and died.

“Iruka.” Tsunade’s voice jerked his thoughts back to the present and kicked his heart into gear like a teenager caught staring at his crush. “Do you want to tell me why we found traces of your signature in Yamato’s chakra pathways?”

“My _what_?“ Iruka yelped, face heating as his pulse quickened. “My chakra signature?”

“When we triaged him after Raido brought him back to the village, he had been almost completely depleted of water chakra, and none that remained in his system had his own signature. Now I can tell.” She nodded her head to the crocus, which Iruka had been infusing with his chakra to keep it alive out-of-season. Shit, it must have been radiating with his signature by now. “It’s yours.”

Memories of their single moment of intimacy came rushing back to him so quickly that he had to cover the increasing blush with his free hand. This was not how he wanted to remember the feel of Yamato’s wrists beneath his fingers, the warmth of their shared chakra as Iruka gently threaded a tendril against the mental block in Yamato’s mind. It felt like a violation to recall the image of their breathless bodies — slick with sweat and come in the aftermath — under the piercing stare of the Godaime. Of two of his students. Of the man who had rejected his affection. Kakashi’s gaze might as well have split him open and wrung all the pride right out of him.

“I was just curious.” Was that his voice? So small and pathetic as he spoke. “He told me he couldn’t use his mokuton, and I wanted to see if I could help.”

“I didn’t realize you and Yamato were close,” Tsunade said. The statement was genuine, but Iruka couldn’t suppress the feeling of ridicule simmering in his chest.

Naruto squinted at him in suspicion. “Iruka-sensei, are you friends with Yamato-taicho?”

Iruka regretted not studying more earth jutsu while he had the chance, if only so he could have an excuse to open up the floor and have it swallow him at that moment.

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” Iruka said with eyes downcast. Tsunade’s open-toed shoes stepped into his field of vision, and her heavy hand on his shoulder startled him into meeting her gaze.

“Iruka, if you hadn’t given him your chakra, he would probably be in a burial plot right now instead of in a hospital.” Though she did not smile at him, her golden eyes shone with the sort of earnest respect he hadn’t seen since Sandaime took his report on Mizuki. “Have confidence in your intuition, sensei. You made the right call.”

The thought of Yamato’s name (what name would it be?) carved into a memorial stone tore into the deepest place of his heart. Because Yamato was ANBU, and they didn’t bury ANBU bodies. All Raido would have brought home were the tags around his neck. Iruka tried to imagine being handed that porcelain mask, tracing the red swirls and the cat ears as a nameless shinobi in a black cloak gave him condolences. He tried to imagine what would’ve happened if he hadn’t woken up and forced himself out of the house that morning after his drunken embarrassment of a confession and instead let the hangover and the humiliation keep him in bed all day.

It was like something reached in and wrenched the breath right out of him, and yet there was Kakashi’s hand again, warm and stabilizing as the images in Iruka’s brain tried to shake his foundation.

_“There isn’t anyone else in this village I’d trust more than you to tell me when I’m not doing the right thing. That makes you one of the most powerful people in the village.”_

The words resurfaced in his mind as he met Kakashi’s steel grey eyes. The jonin held himself with the same disaffected slouch that would have driven Iruka mad even a week ago. The frustrating duality of his attraction to the man came in how much Kakashi seemingly impassive nature made his heart race with impassioned fury. But for all his bullshit bravado, he was just as vulnerable and insecure as Iruka himself. Maybe the hints of it had always been there. The hesitant glances. The compliments in the midst of their conflicts. The moments of deference whenever Iruka would push back on him.

And for all the quiet confidence Kakashi tried to channel, he had never been cruel or arrogant. Just a man seeking an answer to the same question they all had after the war: how to reclaim some small bit of normalcy. It must have pained him to see harm come to a friend as a result of a decision he’d made. It must have terrified him given those same kinds of decisions would now have an impact on a nation.

Iruka set the crocus on the table by the bedside, eyes lingering on the hastily scrawled words, “_For Iruka-sensei_,” on the tin. He was resolved to help Kakashi however he could. He would do it for Konoha, his home, and he would do it for Kakashi, who was still a friend despite it all. But breaking through the vulnerable cracks in that masked, silver-haired facade — he couldn’t spend his life doing that, trying to find some sliver of love underneath. Not alone. Not without Kakashi’s help. And not when there was something truer that could grow with Iruka’s help.

“You’re taking the lead, here, sensei,” Kakashi said with a quiet nod.

Iruka motioned for the scroll from Tsunade and stepped around to stand on the other side of Yamato’s bed. Sakura and Naruto peered curiously over his shoulder as he unrolled it once again, traced his fingers across the strokes of ink that formed the key to unlock the seal. “All this will do is give him an infusion of water chakra, won’t it? It’s meant to defend water-nin from an external enemy draining their chakra.”

“More or less,” Kakashi confirmed. “It was designed in response to the Zetsu clones.”

Comprehension dawned on Sakura’s face. “Which means it won’t help if the drain is internal. It’ll just give his body more chakra to feed on.”

“Right.” Iruka felt the corners of his mouth pulling into a frown, and it cemented into a solidly pained expression when Tsunade made a disappointed hum.

“This is what I feared,” the Godaime said. “We’re delaying the inevitable. We need to initiate a transfer to the neuro unit.”

The neuro unit, where they would root around in the most intimate parts of Yamato’s psyche. Where priority was given to information and chakra recovery, even if it came at the expense of precious memories. Or private feelings. Or the subtle personality quirks that made a person uniquely human.

“No,” Iruka yelped, and the force of his words startled him so much that for a moment he thought they’d been spoken by someone else. “You can’t take him from—” He bit his lip. “You have to let me try.”

The long pause that followed hung like a haze, stifling the very air in the room. Tsunade’s demeanour darkened, clearly having reached the extremity of her patience. Finally, she closed her eyes and released a centering breath. “You have until my debrief with Kakashi is over. If you’re not finished by the time we return, I’m sending him to Ino for evaluation.”

And then Iruka could breathe again. Just for a moment. At some point his fingers had slipped into Yamato’s loose grasp — cold, much too cold, why couldn’t they keep him warmer? — and squeezed. “Understood, Hokage-sama.”

* * *

By the time the door shut behind Kakashi and Tsunade, Iruka’s hands were shaking so badly that Sakura had to pry the scroll from his grasp and unfurl it across the foot of the bed where Yamato lay.

Why was he shaking? He had done this before, hadn’t he? Despite the unintended physical reaction it caused, Iruka was confident he could perform the yin release technique again. It was simply a matter of overcoming Yamato’s mental barrier this time. Iruka was certain he could figure that out.

In time. With enough chakra. It was simple.

Fuck, it wasn’t simple at all.

The barrier had shut him out with enough impact to drain his energy to the point of exhaustion, and it had been triggered by the barest brushes of Iruka’s chakra. How would Yamato’s mind react to a more forceful intrusion? Iruka’s stomach roiled even thinking about having to violate those boundaries of trust. Even if it was to save the man’s life... Even if Iruka did care about him deeply... did that give him the right to probe so far into something so private?

“Why do we even need this stupid scroll if it isn’t going to work?” Tufts of bright yellow fringe pulled between Naruto’s fingers as he buried frustrated hands in his hair. “Can’t I just tell Kurama to fix Yamato-taicho himself?”

“It’s a chakra imbalance issue,” Sakura chided. “This isn’t a problem you can fix by throwing a lot of energy at it.”

“The earth and water balance in his chakra pathways have to be restored,” Iruka explained. “That takes precision.”

Sakura nodded. “And a water affinity.”

“But if his body is just going to burn up all the water chakra as soon as he gets it, then what’s the point in using it on him?” Naruto asked.

“Well,” Iruka began, staring back down at the scroll. “We’re not going to use it on him. We’re going to use it on me.”

“Sensei—”

But Iruka knew the risk even before Naruto could voice it. A scroll like that could only contain enough chakra to restore basic ninjutsu functionality to an average shinobi. At most, it would maybe double Iruka’s reserves. Whether it would be sufficient to use his yin release long enough to overcome Yamato’s mental barrier...

It wasn’t worth thinking about.

“What other choice do we have? It has to be me.” The mattress dipped as Iruka sat next to Yamato, grasping his wrists in either hand. “Sakura-kun has enough of a water affinity to activate the scroll on me. But after that...” He shrugged. The sardonic smile that pulled at his lips did nothing to hide his trembling or the rotten pit of worry that was only sinking deeper into his gut. “Hopefully your senjutsu can revive me before I die.”

He expected them to protest, but instead Naruto and Sakura exchanged determined glances before nodding at Iruka with grim determination etched on their faces. And there it was again — that tender lump of pride welling up in his throat, constricting the vain reassurance he automatically gave to all of his students that everything would be fine. Iruka would never stop being astounded by them. Two perfect embodiments of the Will of Fire he would protect with his life.

Two formidable shinobi he would _trust_ with his life.

Bent over the scroll at the door of the bed, the curtain of pink hair obscured Sakura’s face, but the tell-tale blue glow heralded the chakra she was gathering to activate the seal. Naruto stood at Iruka’s side, bracing a hand on bicep. “OK,” he said. “Go get him, sensei.”

The energy hit him harder than a crashing tide against the shore. Water was rising from his feet even though the room was dry. A crest of pure chakra. A cool and damp touch to every nerve ending, flowing higher still, until it felt like it would spill from his mouth.

The impact sent him sprawling forward until his forehead hit Yamato’s shoulder, loose strands of his chestnut ponytail tangling in the IV tubing taped to the jonin’s arm. The bed frame knocked into the side table and sent the tin with the crocus clattering to the floor, spilling soil and petals across the wooden tiles.

The room was blue, and it was yellow, and it was nothing. Iruka saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing except the pulse of chakra as he began pushing it into Yamato’s wrists.

And then he heard nothing, and it was all nothing.

* * *

Iruka woke to yellow.

Not around him, but behind his eyes, for when he awoke he was unable to open them. Soil impacted his vision, clogged his mouth and nose until its musk consumed his senses. The earth pinned his arms and legs, restricting movement, and when he opened his mouth to scream, grains of dirt trapped the sound on his tongue.

_This is what a corpse feels like_, he thought. A living corpse, decomposing into a ground that fed off his chakra — his very life essence.

With no other recourse, he sent a blast of water outward, hoping it would penetrate into any porous surface his hands could contact. The earth softened. Damp and cold. And— yes! Malleable. The more water he summoned, the more pliant his confines became, until he could flex his wrists. Bend his knees. The dirt on his tongue grew muddy and viscous.

Once he could get purchase of the ground beneath his feet, he thrust his weight upward, pulling away the mud from his eyes, though it was still not enough to clear his vision. Blindly he dug, further and further up, guided only by the weight of the mud that lightened as he increased the output of his water jutsu. He had no idea how deep he was buried or how much farther he had to dig. His lungs burned with the need for oxygen. 

The yellow behind his eyes brightened as he moved, and it kick-started his pulse in hopeful giddiness. Closer to the sun. Closer to the sky. He sent out one final wave of water, and the mud parted enough for the air to touch his fingertips.

And then finally— air. The gasp seized his whole chest as his head broke through the surface. Clawing until the dirt caked beneath his nails, he heaved and grappled with mud like quicksand until his arms found enough solid land to pull himself free of the mire.

It was warm in this place, wherever he lay — beneath sun and sky and a gentle breeze on his mud-caked cheeks. Iruka rolled onto his back and spat out the mud like vile poison. When he scraped the soil from his eyes, he found himself collapsed in a fallow field, spread out until it reached the hazy yellow horizon. No direction that he could glean. Only dirt. Soil as dry as sand. Brown as far as the eye could see, save for occasional sprigs of green weeds scattered about.

Except— He turned his face toward the direction of the sun and squinted until—

Yes. It was a crocus. Yellows petals swaying in the slight gust of dry air, humming faintly with the music that Iruka knew deeply, intimately as his own chakra.

And a few metres beyond it, another crocus. 

And another.

They stretched out in a path the color of sunlight, beckoning him to an unknown destination. A shadow on the horizon. A tree? A building? A house?

Yamato.

Maybe. He didn’t know. But as he lifted himself onto his feet, with mud dripping from the tips of his hair like he’d just yanked it from a morass of death, Iruka swore he would find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Go get your man, Iruka-sensei.


End file.
